“He cannot sell that information and receive a profit for tipping off other people who will trade on that information before it becomes publicly available and is absorbed into the market prices.” —Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer under Republican George W. Bush
Trump Media just flipped the switch on something called Truth API. It’s a paid feed that sells Wall Street trading firms faster, machine-readable access to posts from the ten most-followed accounts on Truth Social, including posts by Donald Trump. The Financial Times and CNBC put the price as high as $100,000 a month, or $60,000 a month if you lock in a three-year deal. The interim CEO of Trump Media, Kevin McGurn, called it a licensed, real-time feed of the platform’s “most market-moving Truths.” His words, not mine.
Trump owns roughly 41 percent of the company. Not in a blind trust, but in a revocable trust, with his son Donald Trump Jr. as trustee, which means he can know exactly what he holds. Congressman Jamie Raskin did the arithmetic on paper: nearly half of every single subscription fee lands directly in the president’s pocket.
Read that again. A firm pays six figures a month to hear the president’s market-moving words a beat before you do, and the president keeps half the check.
On July 28, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff wrote the SEC that the service “appears to be an outrageous abuse of the President’s office.” Republican Bill Cassidy told The Hill it’s flat wrong — “a form of buying access.” Susan Collins questioned the whole rationale. Thom Tillis said the appearances trouble him before you even reach the ethics. Lisa Murkowski said pushing market-moving information around raises conflict-of-interest questions. Mark Warner wrote to six industry groups and told their members to just refuse the thing. On July 31, Raskin opened a Judiciary investigation, though as ranking member he holds no subpoena power, so his letter can only persuade, not compel.
The lawyers are talking too. I’ll start- this is another improper, unethical and probably illegal grift by Trump. Renée Jones, a Boston College professor who used to run a division at the SEC, says the offering appears to run afoul of insider trading rules. Richard Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer under Republican President George W. Bush, puts it all into proper perspective, “He cannot sell that information and receive a profit for tipping off other people who will trade on that information before it becomes publicly available and is absorbed into the market prices”
Trump Media waves all of it away (of course they do). They call the API just the fastest way to ingest publicly available data. But there’s more you need to know.
