Trump sued over "brazen" scheme to sell Truth Social API access for $100K a month

“Trump is trying to enrich himself by privatizing government information that he has no right to sell,” said Ben Muessig, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. “We won’t let it stand.” Trump frequently posts official government announcements exclusively on Truth Social, including military attacks and ceasefires, the hiring and firing of agency heads, and major domestic policies, the lawsuit said. “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,” Stern said. “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.” The company’s press release that announced Truth API said that “markets already move on Truth Social posts” and that the service will become a significant, ongoing source of revenue. “Truth API is designed for organizations most impacted by the cost of a delay in information. This includes high-frequency and algorithmic trading firms that require a low-latency, machine-readable feed rather than manual tracking,” the company said. The lawsuit argues that Truth API imposes an impermissible burden on access to Trump’s public announcements. “The First Amendment guarantees equal access to the President’s public announcements, and even content-neutral burdens on that access must be narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest,” the lawsuit said. “There is no legitimate interest, let alone a significant one, in permitting President Trump to profit from selling government information. Similarly, the Fifth Amendment prohibits charging unreasonable sums that cannot be justified to offset the cost of the government benefit, and granting preferential access to crucial government information for arbitrary and irrational reasons, as is the case here.” The lawsuit said Truth Social appears set on making archived posts impossible to access without an API subscription. It pointed to a McGurn quote in which he said, “We’re going to create a lot of friction for those folks that aren’t coming to us directly.” This shows that Trump Media plans to disrupt web-scraping tools and ensure that users must subscribe to Truth API to access deleted or edited posts that are no longer available to the public, the lawsuit said. The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation are both nonprofits and said they will be harmed by the Truth Social scheme. “Both face indefinitely delayed access to the President’s latest posts, and face permanent bars to the President’s archived posts, making it harder for both organizations to do their jobs,” the lawsuit said. We contacted the White House today and will update this article if it provides any comment. This article was updated to correct the amount of Trump Media & Technology Group’s net loss.