‘This is insider trading by definition’: Trump offers $100,000 per month subscription to Wall Street

Key Points:

• NYU economics professor Gian Luca Clementi has labeled Truth API, a data feed service providing early access to Trump’s social media posts, as insider trading because Trump owns 41% of the company and profits directly from it.
• Truth Social and Trump Media & Technology Group have struggled financially, reporting significant losses, but Truth API offers Wall Street firms a paid, low-latency feed of potentially market-moving presidential communications, raising ethical and legal concerns.
• Legal experts debate whether faster access to publicly available posts constitutes insider trading, but some warn the service could violate federal law if Trump shares genuinely nonpublic, market-moving information through the platform.
• House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin has launched an investigation into the Truth API arrangement, accusing Trump of using his office for personal enrichment and demanding records of subscribers and data sources.
• Clementi warns that such insider trading risks undermining market integrity, deterring traders, and potentially causing market collapse, emphasizing the difficulty of prosecuting insider trading but stressing the need for proactive market corrections.