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Last month, Donald Trump\u2019s Truth Social started offering a new product<\/a> to flash traders looking to make a buck: a $100,000-a-month subscription service that would give them early access to the president\u2019s market-moving posts on the social-media platform. Are many of Trump\u2019s posts unintelligible rants, \u201cretruths\u201d from equally unhinged individuals, and bizarre AI memes that, on at least one occasion<\/a>, have featured him walking through Area 51 beside a \u201ctotally nude, surprisingly jacked alien in handcuffs\u201d? Yes. But that doesn\u2019t change the fact that they also sometimes contain news that affects the markets, like the time he wrote, shortly before temporarily pausing tariffs on most countries, \u201cTHIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.\u201d Or when he posted the U.S. would hit Iran \u201cVERY HARD, TONIGHT,\u201d causing crude-oil futures to surge.<\/p>\n Because of this, many people think it\u2019s unfair for a company largely owned by the president to give early access only to those willing and able to to pony up $100,000 a month and that it sounds like insider trading by another name. Among those who think the deal is unfair are San Francisco city attorney David Chui, who filed<\/a> a lawsuit this week against Truth Social parent company Trump Media & Technology Group to stop the early-access program, saying it is violating California\u2019s Unfair Competition Law by giving rich traders government information that average investors are only privy to after the fact. \u201cThey have knowingly created a marketplace for insider trading,\u201d Chiu told the New York Times. \u201cThis scheme has turned the public trust into private profit, and it is corruption at the highest level of government.\u201d Noting the White House\u2019s recent bans<\/a> on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, Chui argued that not only is Truth Social selling information to the few who can afford it, but it\u2019s doing so at a time when Trump is cutting off the flow of information to the public. \u201cThe fact that this has been allowed to happen is astonishing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In response to the Chui\u2019s suit, a spokesman for Truth Social said Monday, \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Chui\u2019s lawsuit follows one filed last month<\/a> by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Intercept, which argue the \u201cprofoundly corrupt\u201d offering violates the First Amendment by making a \u201cprofit from selling government information,\u201d and the Fifth Amendment as well, which prohibits charging \u201cunreasonable sums that cannot be justified to offset the cost of the government benefit.\u201d In addition to Truth Social and Trump, the suit names aide Dan Scavino and Natalie \u201cHuman Printer<\/a>\u201d Harp as defendants, who both have access to the president\u2019s account.<\/p>\n Senators Mark Warner and Alex Padilla have also proposed legislation to ban the program, known as Truth API, while Senator Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff have urged the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate the offering or simply ban it. \u201cThis appears to be an outrageous abuse of the President\u2019s office for his personal benefit,\u201d the lawmakers wrote in a letter to the SEC. Even Republican senator Bill Cassidy has been critical, saying<\/a> in July that it constitutes \u201ca form of buying access.\u201d Senator Lisa Murkowski called the product \u201cwild.\u201d<\/p>\n During Truth Social\u2019s first-ever earnings call last month, interim CEO Kevin McGurn announced<\/a> that ten customers had signed up for the subscription service, netting the company as much as $1 million a month. Less happily, he also revealed the company recorded a net loss of $238 million for the second quarter.<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Intelligencer\u00a0Newsletter<\/p>\n Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n