Ex-prosecutors: Trump Media's paid Truth Social access likely violates federal law

Trump Media & Technology Group has begun selling Wall Street investors a premium subscription to its Truth Social platform—$100,000 per subscriber for real-time access to posts from the president's account and other high-ranking users on the network. The service, called the Truth API data feed, is now the subject of a federal lawsuit that has drawn the attention of 53 former federal prosecutors and agents, who filed a court brief Monday arguing that the business model likely constitutes criminal activity under multiple federal statutes.

The lawsuit was brought by the Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation in the Southern District of New York. The plaintiffs are asking the court to block the early-access service, claiming it violates the First and Fifth Amendments and amounts to what they describe as a fundamentally corrupt arrangement. The defendants named in the case include President Trump himself, along with White House aides Natalie Harp and Dan Scavino.

The former prosecutors' brief, filed in support of the media groups' request for a preliminary injunction, zeroes in on the mechanics of the scheme. They argue that selling advance access to market-moving information—statements that could affect stock prices, currency values, or commodity markets—creates obvious criminal exposure under insider trading laws, specifically the Securities Exchange Act. The brief also cites potential violations of federal statutes prohibiting illegal gratuities, conflicts of interest, and outside compensation for federal employees, as well as the Trade Secrets Act.

To illustrate the risk, the former officials offered a concrete hypothetical: imagine the president announces at 11 a.m. that he is imposing tariffs on a country that exports computer chips. Paid subscribers receive the information at 9 a.m. One of them sells computer chip stocks. When the announcement becomes public at 10 a.m., the stock price plummets. Under securities law, both the president and the subscriber who traded on that advance knowledge could face criminal charges—the same charges they would face if the president had simply emailed or texted the information directly.

The brief notes that criminal liability could extend not only to government officials but to anyone paying for the early access. The former prosecutors wrote that the scheme is "so far from legitimate that it is possibly criminal" and therefore cannot serve any legitimate government interest. They characterized it as posing "an obvious risk of corruption, defying the compelling anti-corruption interests embodied in the Constitution, ethics codes, and federal laws."

Among those who signed the brief are Ryan Crosswell, a former federal prosecutor in the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section who resigned last year in protest after senior officials moved to dismiss an indictment against former New York City Mayor Eric Adams; Michael Bromwich, a former prosecutor and inspector general; and Ty Cobb, a former White House counsel during Trump's first term. The brief was organized jointly by the law firm Singleton Schreiber and the Campaign Legal Center.

The White House and the Justice Department, which is defending the government in the case, have not yet responded to requests for comment. A hearing on the request for a preliminary injunction is scheduled for October 7 at the federal courthouse in Manhattan. The outcome could establish whether the government can legally monetize early access to presidential communications in this way, or whether the court will find the arrangement incompatible with federal law.