NEW YORK—President Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform is facing a lawsuit that the social media platform plans to charge $100,000 per month for advance access to official government announcements on Truth Social violates the First and Fifth amendments to the Constitution.
The lawsuit was filed on August 12 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) and The Intercept.
The plaintiffs — represented by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, the Public Integrity Project, and Altshuler Berzon LLP — are asking the court to bar Trump and White House employees from carrying out this unconstitutional plan.
The Trump Media & Technology Group, which was launched by Trump in 2021, offers Truth Social. Since returning to office, Trump has used his Truth Social account as his primary means of communicating with the public and making official announcements, encompassing everything from agency appointments and firings to military actions and foreign policy.
Last month, the CEO of Truth Social’s parent company announced Truth API, a service that would provide investors early access to “market-moving” messages from the president and other officials on the platform for up to $100,000 per month. At the same time, its CEO announced that the company would take steps to stop users from systematically gathering posts from the platform.
Truth API launched Aug. 1 and has already signed up 10 customers. Many of those customers are believed to be high-frequency traders who hope to capitalize on early notification of policies that might move markets, the Wall Street Journal has reported.
The lawsuit argues that granting preferential access to Trump’s public statements to paid subscribers violates the First Amendment, which guarantees Americans equal access to the president’s public announcements and the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the government from imposing extortionate or unreasonable conditions on the availability of government benefits.
“A president selling priority access to news he himself generates for the benefit of a private company he controls is so blatantly corrupt and unconstitutional that it would have been hard to even fathom just a few years ago,” said FPF chief of advocacy Seth Stern. “Trump's crooked scheme is particularly outrageous because, as documented by our Trump Anti-Press Social Media Tracker, he frequently uses his Truth Social account to berate journalists and even to announce his plans to sue them and criminally investigate them. Then, he makes them wait in line behind paying customers to find out about it unless they’re willing to subsidize the platform he uses to attack them. This brazen grift targets not only the markets but the First Amendment. It cannot stand."
"Nothing could be more antithetical to the free, independent press than the president charging for early access to his public announcements," added The Intercept's chief legal officer David Bralow. "Through this litigation, The Intercept and its journalists are proud to hold the line on a fundamental proposition: Public information belongs to the public."
Beyond the constitutional violations inherent in Truth API, the plaintiffs also argued that the scheme is a money-making opportunity for Trump. Trump owns the largest stake in Trump Media through The Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, which holds approximately 41.43% of Trump Media’s shares, collectively worth more than $1 billion. He is the sole beneficiary of the trust.
“President Trump trampling on the Constitution for the sake of his personal profiteering is nothing new, but this latest scheme is obscene,” said CREW chief counsel Nikhel Sus. “All Americans are entitled to timely access to their president’s public statements, not just those willing to pay the president’s company $100,000 a month. We are proud to represent our clients in their effort to end this corrupt and unconstitutional scheme.”
“President Trump’s attempt to monetize his public statements is about as blatant as a constitutional violation can get,” added Public Integrity Project CEO Brendan Ballou. “The president’s public statements are for the public, not a wealthy few. Our democracy depends on upholding the Constitution and enjoining Trump’s corrupt scheme.”
The lawsuit is available here.
