One of California’s biggest cities on Monday filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s media company’s right to offer paid subscription services, alleging it promotes illegal insider trading.
San Francisco sued to block Trump Media & Technology Group from charging $60,000 to $100,000 per monthly subscription to those who want instant visibility of the president’s various announcements on Truth Social and nine other top accounts on the social media platform, all of which are held by government officials. Truth API, or application programming interface, rolled out in August, echoing data feeds often offered by social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and X, which are widely relied upon by retail and institutional traders for real-time financial and economic data to inform trading decisions.
“This scheme turns the public trust into private profit,” city attorney David Chiu said of the lawsuit, which was filed in San Francisco Superior Court. “It is corruption, plain and simple. Californians should not be forced to compete against wealthy trading firms buying early access to market‑moving information. We are acting decisively to stop this corruption and protect Californians, who work hard, save, and invest responsibly.”
TMTG dismissed the lawsuit in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
“The people of California should outsource their future lawsuits to AI chatbots who, unlike the left-wing activists masquerading as attorneys who filed this lawsuit, will grasp the basic distinction between public and nonpublic information,” the company said.
Trump is the largest shareholder in TMTG and Truth Social’s co-founder. TMTG initially announced the API subscription in July, touting it as a way for users to guarantee “real-time access” to posts instead of relying on manual tracking or internet algorithms.
Chiu framed the subscription on Tuesday as a “pay-to-play scheme for early access to the president’s market-moving government decisions.” He claimed the service violates California’s Unfair Competition Law and called for an order enjoining paid access to Trump’s post and $2,500 in civil penalties for violation.
“These everyday investors are placed at a substantial disadvantage to sophisticated firms willing and able to pay extraordinary sums for advanced access to market-moving information,” San Francisco’s attorney wrote in the lawsuit. “Trump Media’s scheme is unprecedented in its monetization of nonpublic information obtained through government service and sold on the private market.”
San Francisco is not the only entity challenging Truth Social’s subscription plan.
TRUMP ENDORSES DIESEL EXPORT BAN AS GOP FRETS OVER HIGH PRICES
The Intercept and Freedom of the Press Foundation filed a lawsuit over the service last month, alleging that selling priority access to the president’s messages is “extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional.”
The service violates the First and Fifth amendments by directing market-sensitive information to paying clients first, for “unreasonable sums,” the complaint claimed.