Donald Trump’s media company is charging Wall Street firms as much as $100,000 a month for early access to his Truth Social posts, a service that has now landed the president in federal court over allegations that he is selling paying customers early access to government announcements.
Trump Media & Technology Group, the Nasdaq-listed company that owns Truth Social, launched the service, called “Truth API,” on August 1. It provides subscribers with a real-time feed of posts from the platform’s 10 most-followed accounts, including Trump’s, fractions of a second before they appear publicly. That head start could give high-frequency trading firms an advantage in reacting to market-moving posts before other investors see them.
The service also includes an archive of posts dating to 2022 and is designed to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Interim CEO Kevin McGurn said Truth API costs between $60,000 and $100,000 a month and that 10 customers, mostly high-frequency trading firms, had already signed up. He said the potential customer base also includes data center companies, news organizations and large language model developers. Ten customers could generate an estimated $7 million to $12 million annually, roughly two to three times Trump Media’s total revenue last year.
A lawsuit calls the arrangement ‘profoundly corrupt’
The Intercept and the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation sued Trump and several administration officials on Wednesday, August 12, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeking to shut down Truth API.
The complaint calls the arrangement “extraordinary, corrupt and unconstitutional,” arguing that selling priority access to the president’s messages violates the First and Fifth Amendments by giving paying clients market-sensitive information before the public.
The lawsuit says “the president stands to gain financially” by providing “market-moving” government information to customers willing to pay his private company and calls the arrangement “profoundly corrupt.”
The plaintiffs argue that the First Amendment requires equal access to the president’s public announcements.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation said Truth API could interfere with its ability to scrape Trump’s posts and maintain a record of his attacks on the media. The Intercept said the service could put it at a disadvantage against competitors covering breaking news.
Seth Stern, the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s chief of advocacy, said a president selling priority access to news he generates for the benefit of a private company he controls would have been difficult to imagine just a few years ago.
The suit also names Trump executive assistant Natalie Harp, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino and the Executive Office of the President as defendants. It challenges a separate arrangement, giving Truth Social several hours of exclusive access before Trump can post the same material elsewhere and asks the court to bar him from posting official government information exclusively on Truth Social.
The Intercept said Truth Social has been cited in more than 800 of its articles about the Trump administration.
Company dismisses suit as ‘left-wing’ censorship attempt
Trump Media has rejected the lawsuit, saying Trump’s posts are distributed across numerous platforms and news outlets, many of which already offer subscription APIs.
The company characterized the lawsuit as an attempt by left-wing activists to weaponize the courts to censor Trump and harm shareholders. In earlier criticism of the service, Trump Media said Truth API simply provides the fastest way to ingest publicly available Truth Social data and dismissed insider-trading concerns as based on a flawed theory involving information that is already public.
Senators already raised insider-trading concerns
Weeks before the lawsuit, Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Adam Schiff of California asked SEC Chair Paul Atkins to investigate whether Truth API violates federal securities laws.
In a July 28 letter, the senators called the service “an outrageous abuse of the President’s office for his personal benefit” that could undermine everyday investors and market integrity while enriching Wall Street firms and other wealthy insiders.
They urged Atkins to conduct a legal review before the August 1 launch, including whether the service could violate laws against insider trading and market manipulation.
Warren and Schiff also pointed to Trump’s past use of Truth Social to promote individual stocks, including Citigroup, Intel and Palantir, arguing that the activity increases concerns about insider trading and undermines confidence in a level playing field.
Atkins, a free-market Republican appointed by Trump, confirmed through a spokesperson that the SEC had received the letter but did not say whether the agency would investigate.
A Trump Media spokesperson accused the senators of mischaracterizing the service because of ideological opposition to free markets, a misunderstanding of the distinction between public and nonpublic information, or both.