Trump sued over Truth Social advance access sale
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President Donald Trump was sued on Wednesday by a media outlet and a non-profit group seeking to block a controversial new service that sells advance notifications of his posts on Truth Social.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, notes that Trump's posts on his own social media site often move financial markets with announcements about government policy, military actions and other decisions.
"President Donald Trump is charging $100,000 per month for advance access to his official government announcements on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns," the civil suit says.
"This scheme is extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional, and Plaintiffs bring this case to stop it," the suit says. "There is no legitimate interest, let alone a significant one, in permitting President Trump to profit from selling government information."
The suit was filed by The Intercept Media, a news organization, and by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a non-profit group.
The complaint alleges that the new service, known as Truth API, violates the First and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution by giving subscribers preferential access to Trump's public announcements for "unreasonable sums."
Truth Social's parent company, Trump Media, announced in July that it would offer subscribers who paid up to $100,000 each month early access to "market-moving" posts from Trump and other people who use the platform. Trump is the largest shareholder in Trump Media through the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust.
Currently, the suit says, Truth API provides subscribers faster access to posts for the 10 most popular accounts on Truth Social. After Trump, those accounts include the White House itself, Vice President JD Vance, FBI Director Kash Patel, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy.
"This scheme is profoundly corrupt," the suit says. "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 suit says that since resuming office in January 2025, Trump has published between 9,000 and 11,000 posts on Truth Social.
"Often his posts have no immediate corresponding announcement from the White House," the suit says. "In other words, President Trump's posts are the only way to get official government news."
CNBC has requested comment from the White House on the lawsuit.
During a quarterly earnings conference call on Monday, Trump Media CEO Kevin McGurn said Truth API "provides machine-readable feeds of publicly available Truth posts from the platform's top accounts in milliseconds."
"Our customers will get published and publicly available posts fractionally faster," McGurn said.
McGurn also said during that call that Trump Media to date had signed more than 10 customer agreements for Truth API, "generally in the range of $60,000-$100,000 a month."
McGurn said that the company was in active discussions with hyperscalers and some large news organizations and developers of large language models about the service.
"Looking ahead, we expect the next phase of the API to include broader third-party distribution, for example, news feeds, financial data terminals, and specialty publications, which we believe will bring more visibility to this business over time," he said.
In addition to Trump, the suit names as defendants the president's executive assistant, Natalie Harp and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, who are each known to post to Truth Social on behalf of the president; the Executive Office of the President; and the White House Office.
— CNBC's Megan Cassella contributed to this report.
Reporting from CNBC contributed to this story.
