Trump sued over $100,000-a-month early access to ‘Truth Social’ posts – ICLG

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Trump sued over $100,000-a-month early access to ‘Truth Social’ posts – ICLG

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Claimants accuse US president of violating constitutional protections by allowing paying customers to receive official announcements before the wider public.
In a claim that will require a court to consider the unusual intersection between presidential communications, constitutional protections and private commercial interests, President Donald Trump has been sued over a Truth Social service charging as much as $100,000 a month for early access to his posts. The constitutional challenge alleges that official government information is being turned into a commercial product benefiting a company in which he has a substantial financial interest.
The Intercept (a non-profit investigative news organisation) and Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) filed their complaint yesterday (12 August) in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York against Trump, two White House officials, the Executive Office of the President and the White House Office. They claim that giving paying subscribers faster access to presidential announcements violates the First and Fifth Amendments, and are seeking an injunction preventing official government information from being posted exclusively on Truth Social while the paid service operates.
Trump created Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which owns Truth Social, in 2021. He remains its largest shareholder through the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, which the complaint says holds about 41.4% of the company and is worth more than $1 billion. Trump is the trust’s sole beneficiary.
Since returning to the White House in January 2025, the president has regularly used Truth Social to announce government policy and decisions. The complaint, seen by ICLG News, cites posts concerning military operations, tariffs and foreign affairs, as well as appointments to and dismissals from senior government positions. It says some have had no corresponding immediate announcement from the White House.
The case chiefly concerns TMTG’s launch on 1 August of Truth API, a business-to-business service offering faster access to posts from Trump and other senior officials, including Vice President JD Vance, FBI Director Kash Patel and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who is soon to leave her post. Subscriptions cost $100,000 a month, falling to $60,000 for customers making a three-year commitment. TMTG chief executive Kevin McGurn has described the service as targeting organisations prepared to pay for immediate access to “market-moving” posts.
The lawsuit makes four distinct constitutional claims. The claimants argue that the First Amendment protects their right to receive public officials’ statements on equal terms and that Trump’s use of Truth Social for government business means his posts cannot lawfully be made available more quickly to those paying his private company. They also contend that Trump’s Truth Social account constitutes a designated public forum for First Amendment purposes, relying on the US Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Lindke v Freed, which held that a public official’s social-media activity constitutes state action where the official has authority to speak on the state’s behalf and purports to exercise that authority when using social media.
The complaint further invokes the ‘unconstitutional conditions’ doctrine, arguing that journalists should not have to pay or associate with Truth Social to obtain timely access to government information, and alleges that preferential treatment for subscribers violates the equal-protection component of the Fifth Amendment.
Central to those arguments will be whether the alleged restrictions can properly be attributed to the government rather than merely to a private social-media company. The claimants contend that they can because Trump and White House officials use Truth Social to conduct official business, while Trump retains a direct financial interest in its parent company.
FPF chief of advocacy Seth Stern said the arrangement was particularly objectionable for journalists because Trump frequently uses Truth Social to attack the media. “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,” Stern said.
The Intercept’s chief legal officer David Bralow added that the litigation sought to defend a “fundamental proposition: Public information belongs to the public”.
The claimants are asking the court to declare unconstitutional the practice of posting official government information exclusively on Truth Social while the paid API operates. They also want an injunction preventing Trump and the other defendants from continuing the practice, together with their legal costs.
The complaint relies in part on the Supreme Court’s 1888 decision in Banks v Manchester, in which the court held that public officials cannot claim a private financial interest in work produced in their official capacity.
The court will therefore be tasked with answering one straightforward yet highly consequential question: can the US government allow those prepared to pay a company financially connected to the president to receive his official announcements before everyone else?
In The Intercept Media and Freedom of the Press Foundation (claimants) v Donald J Trump and others (defendants), the claimants are represented by teams of lawyers from Altshuler Berzon, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic and Public Integrity Project Fund.
At the time of writing the defendants have neither responded nor publicly named their legal representatives.