Trump sued over $100k-a-month Truth Social feature officials warned was 'illegal'
President Donald Trump is no stranger to a public rant, especially on his own social media platform Truth Social, where he regularly shares his annoyances and passing thoughts.
However, in recent months officials have been warning the president that a feature on the platform could be ‘illegal’, and now Trump is facing a lawsuit.
This comes after the social media site introduced a subscription plan that charges up to $100,000 a month for early access to the US leader’s posts.
A discounted rate of $60,000 a month is offered to people who make a three year commitment to the subscription, known as Truth API.
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The service started in August and, according to a report by the BBC, a whopping 10 firms are known to be paying for it, with early customers mostly being high-frequency trading firms.
Critics have described this move as corrupt and a lawsuit has since been filed with the US district court for the southern district of New York.
The organization behind the lawsuit is the Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation who argue that Trump has a stake in Trump Media worth around $1 billion and could profit from selling early access to information released in his governmental role.
The lawsuit goes on to highlight that subscribers receive access to an archive of Truth Social posts dating back four years, with some having since been deleted.
David Bralow, chief legal officer at The Intercept, stated: “Nothing could be more antithetical to the free, independent press than the president charging for early access to his public announcements.”
Former SEC official Renée Jones previously claimed that offering paid access to Truth Social could fall under insider trading laws, with Jones going on to state that federal securities laws prohibit non-public information and give traders an unfair advantage.
Under law, these actions are considered to be a break of ‘a duty or trust of confidence’, with Jones going on to say: “So if the president’s Truth Social posts are being monetized, and if some people get special access to them, that's misappropriated information. And by giving people his posts early, he is also violating his duty of trust and confidence.”
However, according to Trump Media & Technology Group spokesperson Shannon Devine, an early preview of posts doesn’t count as insider trading, as she added: “Truth API offers customers the fastest way to ingest publicly available Truth Social data. Critics must have invented a new theory of ‘insider trading’ based on publicly available information.”