U.S. President Donald Trump has been sued by two media organizations over Trump Media & Technology Group’s plan to sell faster access to his posts on Truth Social.
The Intercept Media, a news organization, and the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation asked a court in New York Wednesday to block the plan, calling it “extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional.”
Last month, the company announced it would sell faster access to Trump’s market-moving Truth Social posts — a move that drew blowback from Democrats and even rankled some free-market fundamentalists on Wall Street. The service, called Truth API, costs $60,000 to $100,000 a month.
Trump is the largest shareholder of Trump Media. His stake, worth about $1 billion, is held in a trust overseen by his eldest son Donald Trump Jr.
“This scheme is profoundly corrupt,” the news organizations said in their 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.”
They argued that the First Amendment guarantees equal access to a president’s public pronouncements and doesn’t permit early access to be sold.
A spokesperson for the White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump Media said in a statement that information from the president was disseminated by “countless platforms and news outlets, many of which offer subscription APIs.”
“One of those channels is Truth Social, which was founded as an uncancellable haven for free speech after the president was unjustly deplatformed,” the company said.
Earlier this week, Trump Media reported a second-quarter loss of $238 million, driven by plummeting prices of the cryptocurrencies it owns.
The Intercept alleged it is harmed by the delay of official news. And the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which operates a “Trump Anti-Press Social Media Tracker” collecting Trump’s Truth Social posts targeting the press, said the scheme also handicaps its efforts.
The suit seeks an order declaring the exclusive posting of government information on Truth Social to be unconstitutional and blocking the Trump administration from using it for that purpose.