Federal Lawsuit Challenges Truth API Service That Sells Early Access to Trump's Posts for Up to $100,000 a Month
Federal Lawsuit Challenges Truth API Service That Sells Early Access to Trump’s Posts for Up to $100,000 a Month #
President Donald Trump and his administration are facing a federal lawsuit over a new Truth Social service that sells advance access to his posts for up to $100,000 per month, with plaintiffs arguing the arrangement amounts to a constitutional violation that monetises official government communications.
The suit was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan by The Intercept Media, a news organisation, and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a non-profit group. Defendants include Trump himself, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, and the president’s executive assistant Natalie Harp, both known to post to Truth Social on the president’s behalf, as well as the Executive Office of the President and the White House Office.
At the centre of the dispute is Truth API, a product launched by Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, in July. The service delivers machine-readable feeds of posts from the platform’s top accounts in milliseconds, giving paying subscribers a fractional speed advantage over the general public. According to Trump Media CEO Kevin McGurn, who discussed the product on a quarterly earnings call this week, the company has already signed more than ten customer agreements, generally priced in the $60,000 to $100,000 per month range.
The plaintiffs allege that because Trump routinely uses Truth Social as his primary channel for official government announcements, publishing between 9,000 and 11,000 posts since returning to office in January 2025, often without any corresponding White House statement, paying for early access is effectively paying for early access to government policy. The civil complaint argues the scheme violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of equal public access to the president’s statements and the Fifth Amendment by granting preferential treatment to those who can afford “unreasonable sums.” In the context of high-frequency trading, even a millisecond head start on a market-moving policy announcement can translate into millions of dollars in gains.
The suit describes the arrangement as “profoundly corrupt,” noting that Trump, as the largest shareholder in Trump Media through his revocable trust, stands to profit personally from the tiered access scheme. The ten accounts covered by Truth API include the White House, Vice President JD Vance, FBI Director Kash Patel, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., in addition to Trump himself.
A Trump Media spokesperson pushed back, arguing that monetising social media platform data is standard practice across the tech industry and that the president’s posts are widely redistributed by news outlets and other platforms. The White House did not respond to requests for comment. The lawsuit asks the court to bar the president from posting official government information exclusively through a platform that sells premium access to its feed.
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