President Donald Trump was sued in federal court on Wednesday in an attempt to stop him from making money from a new paid service from his company Truth Social that offers early, exclusive access to his contributions to US politics.
The lawsuit alleges that the service, which offers paying customers insights into its posts about U.S. politics on war, tariffs and other issues, violates the Constitution and that official announcements should be made available to everyone at the same time. The new subscription service The program, launched earlier this month, requires Wall Street firms to pay up to $100,000 a month to trade market-moving contributions ahead of others.
“A president selling priority access to news he generates for the benefit of a private company he controls is so blatantly corrupt and unconstitutional that it would have been almost unimaginable just a few years ago,” said Seth Stern, advocacy director at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which was a plaintiff in the case along with The Intercept.
Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media & Technology, said selling quick access to retailers was common in its industry and that the plaintiffs were simply trying to silence the president.
“President Trump’s information is disseminated by countless platforms and news outlets, many of which offer subscription APIs,” it said in a statement, using the acronym for the quick access service. “Now left-wing activists are trying to wrongfully use the courts as a weapon to censor him again and harm our shareholders.”
The early access service is listed on the stock exchange Trump Media is losing hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter and its The inventory has fallen below $10 from $62 shortly after its IPO two years ago.
The plaintiffs claim the service violates two parts of the Constitution: the First Amendment’s right to access a president’s comments on the same terms as other members of the press and public, and the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition on imposing unreasonable conditions on government benefits.
The lawsuit demands that Trump Media be forced to discontinue its new paid service called Truth API, which offers milliseconds faster access.
Trump Media also separately benefits from a deal with Trump that gives Truth Social six hours of exclusive access to his posts before he can distribute them elsewhere. The plaintiffs also appeared to be aiming for this, asking the court to stop him from publishing “only official government information” on his own website.
Trump is Trump Media’s largest shareholder, owning more than 40% of the shares through a trust.
Even before the new API service launched earlier this month, ethics watchdogs criticized Trump’s post on Truth Social as a brazen attempt to profit from the presidency like others money-making venturesincluding those related to cryptocurrencies. Earlier this year, the president filed a required annual financial report showing he had earned revenue more than $1 billion last year of new crypto businesses that his government regulates.
Among other moves since his re-election, Trump’s digital finance company World Liberty Financial has received a $500 million investment from a company linked to the United Arab Emirates government and sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of special Trump meme souvenir coins to his fans federal favor seekersincluding a billionaire who fought a federal lawsuit that was later stayed and then settled.
In addition to the president, the lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York names his deputy chief of staff Daniel Scavino and his assistant Natalie J. Harp as defendants.