Lawsuit Seeks to Shut Down Trump Media's Truth API

The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation went to court in New York on Wednesday to shut down Truth API, a subscription launched this month by Trump Media and Technology Group, the Nasdaq-listed company behind Truth Social.

The subscription provides privileged access to US President Donald Trump's social media posts straight to trading firms, sending them fractions of a second before they appear on the public timeline, which is enough time for high-frequency algorithms to execute thousands of orders before others process the information.

Contracts run from about $60,000 (€52,000) to $100,000 (€86,600) a month and cover the platform's 10 most-followed accounts, among them US President Donald Trump, the White House itself, US Vice President JD Vance, FBI Director Kash Patel and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

More than 10 customers have signed up, mostly high-frequency trading firms, according to company executives.

Interim CEO Kevin McGurn told an earnings call on Monday that subscribers receive news "fractionally faster" than everyone else, having earlier pitched it as a real-time channel for the platform's most market-moving posts.

US President Donald Trump holds roughly 41% of the company through a revocable trust overseen by his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., with the stake currently worth close to $1 billion (€866mn).

Official announcements, The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation argue, belong to the public rather than to whoever pays most for them.

Two constitutional claims

The complaint, which names US President Donald Trump alongside deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, executive assistant Natalie Harp and the Executive Office of the President, calls the arrangement "profoundly corrupt".

It argues the service breaches the First Amendment by denying equal access to presidential announcements and the Fifth by conditioning that access on unreasonable sums, noting that many of the 9,000 to 11,000 posts Trump has published since January 2025 came with no White House statement.

"Trump is trying to enrich himself by privatizing government information," said Ben Muessig, editor-in-chief of The Intercept.

A Trump Media spokesperson countered that critics show "a failure to grasp the distinction between public and nonpublic information", adding that left-wing activists were weaponising the courts.

The White House has not commented on the lawsuit which follows a request last month from US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff for the Securities and Exchange Commission to examine whether the service undermines market integrity.

A pattern that predates the paywall

The service formalises an advantage that has drawn questions for months.

On several occasions this year, futures markets have registered unusual bursts of activity minutes before major Iran war announcements appeared on US President Donald Trump's account.

No investigation has reached a conclusion.

The clearest case came on 23 March, when the S&P 500 and oil futures recorded isolated volume spikes at about 6:50am in New York. Fifteen minutes later Trump posted that talks with Iran had taken place and strikes on its energy infrastructure were paused.

Equity futures jumped more than 2.5% and West Texas Intermediate fell almost 6%.

According to one analysis of 1,341 posts between late January and early April, conducted by the Queensland University of Technology, there were 15 episodes that raised suspicions of insider trading.