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By Tom Sanders
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The Trump administration has hit back at a lawsuit that claims charging Truth Social users $100,000 a month for early access to President Donald Trump’s posts is unconstitutional, calling the complaint “untenable” and demanding the suit be thrown out.
Trump and White House aide Natalie Harp were named in a lawsuit filed by Intercept Media and the Freedom of the Press Foundation on August 12, alleging that the subscription plan violates the First and Fifth amendments, as well as federal law.
“President Trump frequently—and exclusively—posts official government announcements on Truth Social, declaring military attacks and subsequent ceasefires, hiring [and firing] agency heads, and announcing major domestic policies,” the complaint read.
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“This scheme is profoundly corrupt. 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 scheme is also unconstitutional… There is no legitimate interest, let alone a significant one, in permitting President Trump to profit from selling government information.”
Newsweek has contacted Intercept Media and the Freedom of the Press Foundation for comment.
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Responding to the filing on Monday, Trump’s legal counsel argued that Americans had no right to “real-time” access to presidential statements, and that Truth Social was a private business that should not be subject to such a challenge.
“The Constitution guarantees no real-time access to presidential statements and the President does not have to justify his choices about where and how he communicates with the American people.” the defense read. “Nothing in text, history, tradition, or precedent demands such absurd consequences.”
Elsewhere in the court documents, the president’s lawyers claimed that even if the subscription model (Truth API) did not exist, lower-income Americans, such as those unable to pay for internet access or those who do not own a television, would still not have “immediate” access to official announcements, which they claim nullifies the plaintiff’s complaint.
“The President can unilaterally operate his personal Truth Social account without relying on anyone else, including the other Defendants,” the defense added. “Thus, an injunction or a declaration that does not include the President would not, as a legal matter, redress Plaintiffs’ alleged injuries, because the President could and would simply continue to post by himself.”
Newsweek has contacted the Department of Justice for comment.
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What is Truth API?
Launched on August 1, the “Truth API” program provides subscribers with early access to Truth Social posts from Trump and a number of other senior administration officials, including Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino (also named in the lawsuit), Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and FBI Director Kash Patel.
Harp, one of the president's closest and most trusted aides, has been named as a defendant due to her role as the primary White House staffer ”responsible for running Trump's Truth Social account," the lawsuit claims.
Subscribers can sign up for $100,000 a month, or $60,000 a month with a three-year commitment.
But critics have claimed that the plan promotes insider trading, noting the frequency with which the Trump administration uses Truth Social to make major policy announcements and official statements.
A second lawsuit filed against the administration on September 17 makes similar claims, noting that Trump and several senior government officials hold a stake in the company.
“Information the Trump Administration disseminates on Truth Social through its official accounts can have significant consequences for the global economy,” the plaintiffs wrote. “Truth API subscribers—who now receive this potentially market- moving information before the rest of the public—can profit on their early knowledge of what the Trump Administration says, does, and believes.”
Truth API is estimated to have subscriber numbers in the “mid-teens,” potentially generating more than $1 million in revenue since its launch, Trump Media & Technology Group CEO Kevin McGurn told CNBC in August.
Trump transferred his shares in the group to a trust before beginning his second term in January 2025 and remains the group’s largest shareholder and sole beneficiary, the lawsuit notes.
Violating the Constitution
Plaintiffs claim that the Truth API is unconstitutional, violating the First and Fifth amendments.
“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,” they wrote in the complaint.
“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 Constitution guarantees that public officials can “have no pecuniary interest or proprietorship, as against the public at large, in the fruits of their labors,” the complaint highlighted, and said the president is profiting illegally by selling government information.
The president’s lawyers, meanwhile, claim that invoking a constitutional claim over early access to a presidential statement would “call into constitutional question most, if not all, methods of public communication,” including exclusive interviews given to reporters.
“If Plaintiffs were right, the newsstand would become the font of First Amendment claims, for each time a customer purchased the New York Times to read an exclusive interview involving a public official, that customer could claim the official’s choice in platform compelled a subsidy,” the defense wrote.
Intercept Media and the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s lawsuit is one of several filed against the Trump administration over its use of Truth API. Separate lawsuits have also been filed by the American Oversight and Campaign for Accountability and the City and County of San Francisco.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Matthew Cannon and Dave Siminoff.
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