President Trump was sued by nonprofit news groups today over Truth Social’s “Truth API” that sells real-time access to posts from Trump and other top users of the social network. Trump is profiting from selling preferential access to government information, the lawsuit said.
Trump’s social media company this month started charging customers up to $100,000 per month for the earliest access to posts that can have immediate impacts on financial markets. The first customers are mostly high-frequency trading firms that could benefit financially from getting official government news milliseconds before others.
“This scheme is profoundly corrupt. The President stands to gain financially by giving ‘market-moving’ government information to those who are willing and able to pay his personal company,” the lawsuit said.
Truth Social also intends to impose restrictions on web scraping tools and make its API the only way to access archived posts that have been deleted or edited, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit was filed by The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which argue that Trump is violating the US Constitution by preventing equal access to government announcements.
“A president selling priority access to news he himself generates for the benefit of a private company he controls is so blatantly corrupt and unconstitutional that it would have been hard to even fathom just a few years ago,” said Seth Stern, the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s chief of advocacy.
Trump “privatizing government information”
The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the Southern District of New York. It asks the court to declare that posting official government information exclusively on Truth Social while charging for fast access through the API is unconstitutional and unlawful. It seeks an injunction prohibiting the president and aides from posting official government information exclusively on Truth Social as long as the platform maintains the paid API.
“Trump is trying to enrich himself by privatizing government information that he has no right to sell,” said Ben Muessig, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. “We won’t let it stand.”
Trump frequently posts official government announcements exclusively on Truth Social, including military attacks and ceasefires, the hiring and firing of agency heads, and major domestic policies, the lawsuit said.
“Trump’s crooked scheme is particularly outrageous because, as documented by our Trump Anti-Press Social Media Tracker, he frequently uses his Truth Social account to berate journalists and even to announce his plans to sue them and criminally investigate them,” Stern said. “Then, he makes them wait in line behind paying customers to find out about it unless they’re willing to subsidize the platform he uses to attack them. This brazen grift targets not only the markets but the First Amendment.”
Truth Social seeks more customers
Besides Trump, defendants include Executive Assistant to the President Natalie Harp and Deputy Chief of Staff Daniel Scavino. Both Harp and Scavino have access to Trump’s Truth Social account and publish posts on his behalf, the lawsuit said. The other named defendants are the Executive Office of the President and the White House Office.
Trump Media & Technology Group, the owner of Truth Social, reported $1.7 million in revenue and a net loss of $238.1 million in the second quarter. The net loss included $190.4 million in “non-cash losses including unrealized losses on digital assets, digital assets pledged, and equity securities,” the company said.
Trump Media expects that Truth API will help generate more cash. Interim CEO Kevin McGurn said in an earnings call that the firm signed up over 10 customers, mostly high-frequency trading firms that are paying $60,000 to $100,000 a month.
McGurn said Truth Social is in conversations to sign up cloud computing companies, large news organizations, and developers of large language models. The company plans to eventually offer the Truth API to retail investors, he said.
The company’s press release that announced Truth API said that “markets already move on Truth Social posts” and that the service will become a significant, ongoing source of revenue. “Truth API is designed for organizations most impacted by the cost of a delay in information. This includes high-frequency and algorithmic trading firms that require a low-latency, machine-readable feed rather than manual tracking,” the company said.
Lawsuit alleges violation of 1st and 5th Amendments
The lawsuit argues that Truth API imposes an impermissible burden on access to Trump’s public announcements.
“The First Amendment guarantees equal access to the President’s public announcements, and even content-neutral burdens on that access must be narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest,” the lawsuit said. “There is no legitimate interest, let alone a significant one, in permitting President Trump to profit from selling government information. Similarly, the Fifth Amendment prohibits charging unreasonable sums that cannot be justified to offset the cost of the government benefit, and granting preferential access to crucial government information for arbitrary and irrational reasons, as is the case here.”
The lawsuit said Truth Social appears set on making archived posts impossible to access without an API subscription. It pointed to a McGurn quote in which he said, “We’re going to create a lot of friction for those folks that aren’t coming to us directly.” This shows that Trump Media plans to disrupt web-scraping tools and ensure that users must subscribe to Truth API to access deleted or edited posts that are no longer available to the public, the lawsuit said.
The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation are both nonprofits and said they will be harmed by the Truth Social scheme. “Both face indefinitely delayed access to the President’s latest posts, and face permanent bars to the President’s archived posts, making it harder for both organizations to do their jobs,” the lawsuit said.
We contacted the White House today and will update this article if it provides any comment.
