Intercept sues Trump's media company over paid service offering faster access to president's posts

The left-leaning Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against President Donald Trump's media company over its service offering paying Wall Street firms faster access to Trump's Truth Social posts. 

“The President stands to gain financially by giving ‘market-moving’ government information to those who are willing and able to pay his personal company," the lawsuit states, according to The Hill. 

Trump Media & Technology Group launched the premium service on Saturday. It gives paying customers early access to posts published on Truth Social, including posts by President Donald Trump. The new service, called Truth API, is aimed at financial firms, businesses and other institutional users that want a direct feed of posts from some of the platform’s most influential accounts.

According to the company, the service provides a licensed, real-time feed designed for organizations that rely on rapid access to information. Firms pay between $60,000 and $100,000 per month for the service. 

Interim CEO Kevin McGurn told investors on Trump Media’s recent earnings call Monday that the company signed up 10 customers for the service. McGurn said many companies offer licensed real-time public data across the technology, financial information and media industries through commercial Application Programming Interfaces. 

"This is no different," McGurn said. 

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are represented by Yale Law School’s Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic, the left-leaning watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the Public Integrity Project Fund and the law firm Altshuler Berzon.