President Donald Trump and White House aide Natalie Harp are facing a lawsuit over a $100,000-a-month Truth Social subscriber program that gives paying users early access to official government posts. The lawsuit, filed Sept. 17 by watchdog groups American Oversight and Campaign for Accountability, alleges the scheme denies the public equal and timely access to government information and violates the First and Fifth Amendments and federal law. Newsweek contacted the White House and Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, via email on Tuesday, outside of regular working hours.
The “Truth API” program, launched August 1, provides subscribers with real-time access to posts from several high-profile Truth Social accounts, many of them belonging to government officials. API stands for “application programming interface,” a tool that allows different software systems to communicate and exchange data. Truth API provides paying subscribers with a direct, real-time feed of posts from selected Truth Social accounts.
The accounts include those belonging to Trump, the White House, Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and FBI Director Kash Patel. These officials are also named in the lawsuit, along with several federal agencies and White House offices.
Harp, meanwhile, is named as a defendant because she is “reportedly the primary White House staffer responsible” for helping Trump post on his Truth Social account, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit notes that Trump and other government officials frequently use Truth Social to announce major policy updates and other official actions. It cites several examples, including Trump’s January announcement that the U.S. had carried out a strike against Venezuela and captured its leader, then-President Nicolás Maduro.
The complaint also points to Trump’s posts providing updates on the war in Iran and announcing personnel changes and policy updates. Kevin McGurn, interim CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group said in a July press release: “Markets already move on Truth Social posts.” He added that the company expects Truth API to “become a meaningful, ongoing source of revenue for the company.” The complaint said: “Information the Trump Administration disseminates on Truth Social through its official accounts can have significant consequences for the global economy.” “Truth API subscribers—who now receive this potentially market- moving information before the rest of the public—can profit on their early knowledge of what the Trump Administration says, does, and believes,” it said. McGurn told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in late August that the number of Truth API subscribers was in the “mid-teens.” Depending on the subscription tier, that could mean the service had already generated more than $1 million in revenue.
This would be more revenue in a month than the company brought in from all sources in the first quarter of 2026, according to the complaint. The lawsuit notes that Trump and several government officials have held financial interests in the company. Given the potential revenue stream from Truth API, the plaintiffs argue that Trump has an incentive to make the service attractive to subscribers by providing early access to potentially market-moving policy announcements and other government information, and to encourage government officials and agencies to do the same.
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