Two press-freedom groups sued President Trump in federal court in New York on Wednesday over a Truth Social service that charges paying subscribers as much as $100,000 a month for delivery of his posts seconds before they reach the public.
The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation are asking the court to bar the White House from routing official government announcements exclusively through a platform the president controls and profits from. NPR reported that Trump holds more than $1 billion of Trump Media & Technology Group stock through a revocable trust of which he is the sole beneficiary; that trust owns about 41 percent of the company.
The service
Trump Media unveiled the paid feed, called Truth API, in mid-July and promised delivery of posts from Trump and other high-profile accounts "in milliseconds", according to the BBC. More than 10 customers have signed up, described by the company on a Monday earnings call as "primarily high-frequency trading firms", NPR reported. In high-frequency trading, even a few milliseconds of head start can translate into millions of dollars per trade, NPR noted.
The complaint
The complaint calls the arrangement "extraordinary, corrupt and unconstitutional" and asks the court to enjoin Trump from posting official government information exclusively on Truth Social. It alleges the paid feed violates the First Amendment guarantee of equal public access to the president's statements and the Fifth Amendment's due-process protections by rationing that access for "unreasonable sums", NPR reported. The suit also names presidential aides Natalie Harp and Dan Scavino, the Executive Office of the President and the White House Office as defendants.
Brendan Ballou, who leads the Public Integrity Project and represents the plaintiffs, told NPR that Trump "is using the power of the office to vastly enrich himself" through the arrangement, calling the setup "unprecedented in American history". Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told the BBC the arrangement is "so blatantly corrupt and unconstitutional that it would have been hard to even fathom just a few years ago".
The company answers
A Trump Media spokesperson told the BBC that "left-wing activists" were "trying to wrongfully weaponize the courts to censor him again and harm our shareholders", and argued that subscription APIs for social-media data are commonplace among technology companies. The White House did not respond to NPR's requests for comment, and no right-leaning outlet's account of the filing was captured in the reporting reviewed for this article.
Trump Media disclosed a $238 million second-quarter loss on Monday, tied largely to cryptocurrency holdings, and told investors it would concentrate on Truth Social. Executives said they were abandoning plans to launch Truth Predict, a proposed entry into prediction markets, and would instead promote Crypto.com's product to Truth Social users.