President Donald Trump has been sued in Manhattan federal court over a new Truth Social service that charges customers as much as $100,000 a month for faster access to posts from Trump and other prominent accounts, with the plaintiffs arguing that the arrangement allows his private company to profit from potentially market-moving government information.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday by nonprofit news organization The Intercept Media and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, describes the service as an “extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional” scheme and asks the court to stop it.
The plaintiffs allege that Trump is effectively selling advance access to official government announcements through Truth Social, creating a system in which financial firms and other paying customers can receive information before the broader public.
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“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 lawsuit says.
It alleges that Trump “stands to gain financially by giving ‘market-moving’ government information to those who are willing and able to pay his personal company.”
The legal challenge centers on Truth API, a business-to-business data service announced last month by Trump Media, the parent company of Truth Social. The service is designed to provide customers with a machine-readable feed of posts from the platform’s highest-profile accounts, including Trump’s account, which has about 13 million followers.
Trump Media’s interim CEO Kevin McGurn provided further details about the service during the company’s first earnings call on Monday, saying customers would receive posts from top accounts faster than ordinary users. McGurn said the company had signed more than 10 customers since announcing the service, primarily high-frequency trading firms.
Subscription prices range from $60,000 to $100,000 a month, he said.
The company is also in discussions with major cloud-computing companies, large news organizations and developers of large language models, according to McGurn. Trump Media is also evaluating potential opportunities to license Truth Social data to prediction market companies.
“Truth API provides a machine-readable feed of publicly available Truth Social posts from the platform’s top accounts in milliseconds,” McGurn said.
Customers, he added, receive “published and publicly available posts fractionally faster.”
That distinction is central to the dispute. Truth Social posts are publicly available, but the plaintiffs argue that selling faster access to posts from the president creates a meaningful commercial advantage when those posts contain information capable of affecting financial markets.
The lawsuit specifically objects to the possibility that presidential announcements could be monetized through the president’s privately controlled social media company.
The plaintiffs argue that the arrangement violates the First and Fifth Amendments and constitutes an unlawful use of government information for private financial gain.
“There is no legitimate interest, let alone a significant one, in permitting President Trump to profit from selling government information,” the lawsuit says.
The legal challenge comes as Truth Social has increasingly become an important communications platform for Trump, who frequently uses social media to announce policies, respond to political developments and comment on financial and economic issues.
The potential market impact of Trump’s posts has also become an important consideration for traders. A presidential statement concerning tariffs, trade policy, sanctions, interest rates, companies, or other economic matters can potentially affect financial markets within seconds.
That creates a commercial incentive for firms capable of receiving and processing such information faster than other market participants.
High-frequency trading firms are particularly relevant because their strategies depend on extremely fast access to information and automated execution. Even a small reduction in the time between the publication of a market-sensitive post and a trading firm’s receipt of that information can potentially matter for certain trading strategies.
Trump Media’s decision to charge substantial monthly fees for that faster access therefore puts a new commercial dimension around Trump’s social media communications.
Although the company has characterized Truth API as a data service providing access to information that is already public, the lawsuit, not alleging that the underlying Truth Social posts are secret, focuses on the commercial value of receiving them before other users and whether Trump can personally benefit from that speed advantage when the posts involve official government information.
For Truth Media, Truth API represents a potentially significant expansion of Truth Social beyond conventional social networking. Its proposed customer base extends from financial firms to major technology companies, news organizations, and AI developers.