A pair of watchdog groups on Thursday sued President Donald Trump and other US officials over their "pay-to-play" scheme that gives subscribers who fork over a monthly fee of up to $100,000 early access to key decision-makers' posts on Truth Social. The president's Trump Media & Technology Group announced the social media platform's…
Page F2From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 26 September 2026
Trump Media sued three times over charging Wall Street $100,000 a month for early access to his posts.

As it ran on the front
Truth Social's parent company announced in July that it would sell early access to the president's own posts for up to $100,000 a month — call it a subscription, though the product is essentially advance notice of market-moving statements from the president's own account. Congress did not intervene. On August 1, the Truth API went live. It already had subscribers.
Eighteen days later, on August 19, the Public Integrity Project filed suit. Its CEO, Brendan Ballou, called the arrangement "profoundly corrupt" — a description that reads less like a legal argument than a plain summary of the same $100,000 line item, restated in a courthouse instead of a press release.…
…(cont) On September 18, a second group of watchdog organizations sued the president and other officials, describing the identical fee as a "pay-to-play" scheme. Three days later, former federal prosecutors told CBS News that selling early access to a sitting president's posts is illegal — not arguably, not probably, illegal, on the record, from people whose job used to be making that call. And on September 22, San Francisco's city attorney, David Chiu, sued Trump Media & Technology Group directly, arguing that delayed posts sold to $100,000 subscribers violate California's Unfair Competition Law, the state's own insider-trading statute.
All together now: one hundred thousand dollars a month, for the privilege of reading the president's mind before the rest of the country does. This week, National Review arrived at the conclusion the lawsuits can't quite deliver as a remedy: only Congress can stop this. The courts can describe the arrangement in as much detail as they like. They cannot end it. That authority sits with the legislature, and the legislature has not scheduled a vote.
“This is insider trading with a subscription button, dressed up as a media product so it never has to be called that out loud. Wall Street pays a hundred grand a month to read the president's own posts before your retirement account does, and three different courthouses have said so in writing this year. Congress could end it with one floor vote; instead the lawsuits are doing the job the legislature was elected to do.”
“Look, this is just a premium content tier — CNN has one, the Times has one, why is it suddenly a scandal when — okay, fine, it's the sitting president's own account and it costs more than most people's rent, but that's a market-rate question, not a legal one. Three lawsuits, sure, but lawsuits get filed against everybody, that doesn't automatically mean — actually, you know what, let me get back to you on that.”
The receipts
The DOJ disbanded its crypto enforcement team in April 2025 and ordered inconsistent investigations closed, while the president's family runs a crypto business CNBC, 8 April 2025 (Blanche memo)
Selling early access to Trump Truth Social posts is illegal, ex-prosecutors sayTrump Media & Technology recently launched a Truth Social API data feed, charging $100,000 for "real-time access to posts from the highest-ranking Truth Social accounts."
The DOJ disbanded its crypto enforcement team in April 2025 and ordered inconsistent investigations closed - while the president's family runs a crypto business CNBC, 8 April 2025 (Blanche memo)
Only Congress Can Intervene on Trump’s Truth Social ProfiteeringWhat the president and his associates are doing is probably illegal. Whether any legal action could successfully be brought is another matter.
The city of San Francisco sued Truth Social's parent company Monday over delayed Truth Social posts made by President Trump that users can receive early access to if they pay $100,000. The city's attorney, David Chiu, argued that Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) violated California's Unfair Competition Law, a state law against…
· "Profoundly Corrupt": Trump Sued for Selling Early Access to His Truth Social Posts for $100K/Month from the morgue, 19 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.