NEW YORK — U.S. President Donald Trump was sued in federal court Wednesday to stop him from making money off a new, paid service at his Truth Social company offering early, exclusive access to his posts on U.S. policy. The lawsuit alleges that Trump’s deal to post first on his own company’s site about U.S. policy decisions on war, tariffs and other issues violates the Constitution and that official announcements should be made available to everyone at the same time. The suit comes after his media company, Trump Media & Technology, rolled out a new subscription service earlier this month charging Wall Street firms as much as US$100,000 a month to get his posts faster so they can trade off them. “A president selling priority access to news he himself generates for the benefit of a private company he controls is so blatantly corrupt and unconstitutional that it would have been hard to even fathom just a few years ago,” said Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, a plaintiff in the case along with news outlet The Intercept. Trump Media said selling fast access to traders is common in its industry, and that the plaintiffs are just trying to silence the president. “Information from President Trump is disseminated by countless platforms and news outlets, many of which offer subscription APIs,” it said in a statement, using the acronym for the fast access service. ”Now, left wing activists are trying to wrongfully weaponize the courts to censor him again and harm our shareholders.” The early access service comes as the publicly traded Trump Media loses hundreds of millions of dollars each quarter and its stock has dropped below US$10 from US$62 shortly after going public two years ago. The plaintiffs argue that Trump’s deal giving exclusive Truth Social access to his posts for six hours before being distributed elsewhere violates two parts of the Constitution — the First Amendment right to access a president’s comments on equal terms with other members of the press and public and the Fifth Amendment prohibitions on charging unreasonable conditions for government benefits. The suit asks that Trump Media be forced to end both the new paid service, called Truth API, and its exclusive access deal with his company in general. Even before the new API service was started earlier this month, ethics watchdogs criticized Trump’s posting on Truth Social as a brash attempt to profit off the presidency in keeping with other money making ventures tarnishing the office, especially ones related to cryptocurrencies. Earlier this year, the president filed a required annual financial disclosure report that showed he took in more than a US$1 billion last year from new crypto businesses that his administration regulates. Among other moves since he was reelected, Trump’s digital finance company, World Liberty Financial, got a US$500 million investment from a company tied to the government of the United Arab Emirates and sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of special souvenir Trump meme coins to his fans and possible federal favor seekers, included a billionaire fighting a federal law suit that was later paused, then settled. In addition to the president, the lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York names his deputy chief of staff Daniel Scavino and his executive assistant Natalie J. Harp as defendants. --- Bernard Condon, The Associated Press
