// THE VERGE — MODA & SOCIETÀ
San Francisco sues Trump Media for selling early access to Trump posts
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The city is accusing Trump Media of facilitating insider trading.
The city is accusing Trump Media of facilitating insider trading.
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San Francisco is suing the Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company behind Truth Social, for selling early access to President Donald Trump’s posts on the social media site. The lawsuit, filed today in California state court, alleges that the Truth API feed is a “corrupt business scheme” that violates both California’s Unfair Competition Law and federal ethics and anti-corruption laws that prohibit insider trading.
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle recently called Truth Social the “most powerful and popular social media platform in the world.” While the latter part of that statement is objectively untrue based on any credible estimates — in fact, Truth Social traffic has declined over the last year — Trump often makes high-stakes announcements in his capacity as president on the platform, and his posts there have a clear effect on the global economy. To capitalize on this, Trump Media recently launched Truth API, a service that charges select customers $100,000 a month for early access to the 10 most influential accounts on Truth Social, including Trump’s and those of other White House officials. Trump Media’s interim CEO, Kevin McGurn, acknowledged as much in his announcement of Truth API, saying that “markets already move on Truth Social posts.”
The San Francisco lawsuit cites several examples of this, some of which took place after the launch of Truth API. On August 21st, for example, Trump posted that the federal government was going to “lower the price of ground beef for working families” by exempting some ground beef imports from tariffs. When the market opened a few hours later, cattle futures declined significantly, according to the complaint.