‘Profoundly corrupt’: Trump sued over scheme to charge $100k for early Truth Social access

“The president stands to gain financially by giving ‘market-moving’ government information to those who are willing and able to pay his personal company,” The Intercept argues in the federal suit.MANHATTAN (CN) — Online news outlet The Intercept sued President Donald Trump on Wednesday over his “extraordinary, corrupt and unconstitutional” scheme to sell early access to his social media posts for $100,000 per month.In a 30-page lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, The Intercept is looking to block the president’s Truth API service, announced earlier this summer. The product allows paying subscribers to get backend, instantaneous access to Trump’s posts on his Truth Social platform, which he owns, before the public sees them.This effectively allows financial players and other willing customers to pay the six-figure monthly sum to be the first to see government information, The Intercept claims. When announcing Truth API last month, Trump Media CEO Kevin McGurn effectively admitted as much, stating the service will provide a “real-time feed of the platform’s most market-moving Truths while advancing our strategy to monetize proprietary assets through a high-margin, recurring revenue stream.”“This scheme is profoundly corrupt,” The Intercept says in its complaint. “The president stands to gain financially by giving ‘market-moving’ government information to those who are willing and able to pay his personal company.”Corruption aside, the media outlet claims the service is an affront to the First Amendment since it places an “unlawful burden” on the public’s right to access public information and restricts access to “public fora.”The “out-and-out plan of extortion” also violates the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection clause, The Intercept says.“Plaintiffs have a Fifth Amendment right not to be charged unreasonable sums to access official government information,” it argues.Neither the White House nor Trump Media returned requests for comment by press time.Trump Media announced the scheme in July as a way to create “lasting value for shareholders.” The publicly traded company, of which Trump himself is the majority and controlling shareholder, reported a net loss of $238.1 million for the second quarter of 2026.Baseline access to Truth API costs $100,000 per month, but customers can get a discounted monthly price of $60,000 if they commit to subscribing for three years. In addition to Trump’s own posts on the platform, subscribers also got faster access to the other nine most popular accounts on the platform: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, the White House, Vice President JD Vance, FBI Director Kash Patel, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.Early customers included financial news organizations and high-frequency trading firms.The Intercept sued alongside the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a free speech nonprofit founded in 2012 in the wake of the WikiLeaks donations blockade. Trump is a defendant in his official capacity, as is his executive assistant Natalie Harp, the Executive Office of the President, the White House Office and Scavino.Concerns over Trump self-dealing with Truth API have been well-documented. In July, Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Adam Schiff of California penned a scathing letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding the service, noting that Trump has repeatedly used Truth Social to hawk specific stocks like CitiGroup and Palantir.“The Trump administration is the most corrupt in the nation’s history, and questions about inappropriate insider access to information about its policies and actions have raised questions on multiple occasions,” the senators wrote. “But even amid these clouds of corruption, Trump Media’s plan to disseminate market-moving information through the president’s own company, while charging insiders for access ahead of the public for the benefit of his company — and to the detriment of the investing public — represents a shocking abuse of the office of the president and the trust of the American public for his personal gain.”Trump’s net worth has ballooned during his second presidential term, thanks in part to massive revenues brought in by his family’s crypto business World Liberty Financial — a venture that has only fueled criticism of Trump using the office for personal gain.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads