Two organizations have sued President Trump in federal court in Manhattan, seeking to block Truth API — a Truth Social service that charges subscribers up to $100,000 a month for early access to Trump's posts, which often serve as the first channel for official government announcements.
President Donald Trump was sued Wednesday over a new service that sells subscribers early access to his posts on Truth Social — posts the complaint alleges routinely serve as the primary channel for official government announcements.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, names Trump, his executive assistant Natalie Harp, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, the Executive Office of the President, and the White House Office as defendants.
The suit was brought by The Intercept Media, a news organization, and the Freedom of the Press Association, a non-profit group.
"President Donald Trump is charging $100,000 per month for advance access to his official government announcements on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns," the complaint states. "This scheme is extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional, and Plaintiffs bring this case to stop it."
The service at issue, called Truth API, is offered by Trump Media — Truth Social's parent company — to subscribers who pay up to $100,000 each month. Trump Media announced the service in July, marketing it as providing early access to "market-moving" posts from Trump and other prominent accounts on the platform.
The complaint alleges Truth API violates the First and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution by granting subscribers preferential access to public announcements for what it characterizes as "unreasonable sums."
Currently, the service provides faster access to posts from the 10 most popular accounts on Truth Social. Beyond Trump, those accounts include 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 Kennedy.
The suit notes that since returning to office in January 2025, Trump has published between 9,000 and 11,000 posts on Truth Social, and that those posts often precede any corresponding announcement from the White House. "In other words, President Trump's posts are the only way to get official government news," the complaint says.
Trump is the largest shareholder in Trump Media through the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, a financial relationship the plaintiffs argue creates a direct personal benefit from the service.
"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 suit states.
Trump Media CEO Kevin McGurn, speaking during a quarterly earnings call on Monday, characterized Truth API differently, describing it as a service that delivers "machine-readable feeds of publicly available Truth posts from the platform's top accounts in milliseconds." McGurn said subscribers "will get published and publicly available posts fractionally faster."
McGurn disclosed that Trump Media had signed more than 10 customer agreements for Truth API, "generally in the range of $60,000–$100,000 a month." He also said the company was in active discussions with hyperscalers, large news organizations, and developers of large language models about the service.
"Looking ahead, we expect the next phase of the API to include broader third-party distribution, for example, news feeds, financial data terminals, and specialty publications, which we believe will bring more visibility to this business over time," McGurn said.
CNBC requested comment from the White House on the lawsuit. No response was provided before publication.
The case centers on a constitutional question with few clear precedents: whether a sitting president can, through a company he controls, monetize access to information that would otherwise constitute public government communications. How the federal court in Manhattan rules on the plaintiffs' request to block the service will likely shape the legal boundaries of that question.
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