Senators Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff have formally asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate Truth API, the Trump Media & Technology Group product that sells Wall Street firms early access to President Donald Trump's Truth Social posts. Trump Media has discussed charging subscribers between $60,000 and $100,000 a month for the feed, which is scheduled to go live on August 1 — leaving the agency just three days to act before the letter's own timeline runs out.
Warren, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, and Schiff, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, sent their letter to SEC Chair Paul Atkins on July 28. Their objection centers on latency rather than content: Truth API routes posts from the ten most influential Truth Social accounts to paying clients before the general public sees them.
Why the Senators Are Alarmed
Trump owns roughly 41% of Trump Media through a trust overseen by his children, meaning he profits from every Truth API subscription sold. The senators pointed to his history of naming specific stock tickers in posts, including Citigroup, Intel and Palantir — a pattern a CNN review reportedly found included buying shares before praising 21 companies publicly, with researchers separately flagging trades that spiked ahead of announcements.
“This appears to be an outrageous abuse of the President’s office for his personal benefit that undermines everyday investors and the integrity of our markets, while enriching Wall Street and other wealthy insiders.”
Two Precedents the SEC Has Already Set
Paid early-access data feeds aren't new, and regulators have shut down comparable arrangements before. In July 2013, Thomson Reuters suspended a deal that gave select clients University of Michigan consumer sentiment data two seconds early, with subscribers paying up to $6,025 a month for the edge. In February 2014, Berkshire Hathaway's Business Wire terminated direct feeds to high-frequency traders. Both moves followed pressure from then-New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
Truth API's reported ceiling price runs roughly 16 times the Michigan-data premium — but neither of those earlier cases involved a sitting president, a distinction that complicates how directly they apply here.
A Regulatory Gray Area
Regulation FD, adopted in August 2000, bars companies from selectively disclosing material nonpublic information about themselves to select investors. Truth API sells policy signals rather than corporate information, which is why the senators reached for insider-trading and market-manipulation statutes instead of Reg FD in their request.
Trump Media has rejected the characterization entirely, with a spokesperson saying the senators had invented “a new theory of ‘insider trading’ based on publicly available information.” The SEC confirmed it received the letter but declined further comment; Atkins, sworn in during April 2025 after running consultancy Patomak Global Partners, has generally favored a lighter enforcement posture. Revenue pressure may be adding urgency to Trump Media's push regardless — the company posted a $406 million quarterly loss in the first quarter of 2026, with its stock trading near $9.85, about 80% below its March 2024 debut. In both the 2013 and 2014 precedents, the vendor ultimately withdrew the product voluntarily once buyers grew uncomfortable being publicly named, suggesting the subscriber list — not a formal enforcement action — may end up being the real pressure point this time as well.
