Critics argue the service could let President Trump, who owns about 41% of the company, profit from early access to market-moving presidential communications. “I’ll be blunt,” Gian Luca Clementi, an economics professor at NYU Stern School of Business, told Fortune. “This is insider trading by definition.”
“He’s going to monetize the role of the office of the president of the United States,” he said. “The undisputable fact is that somebody is going to earn some more money than before, and that’s the president of the United States.” From the report: Trump’s media venture has struggled to build a profitable social media business despite its lofty valuation. Truth Social has reported significant operating losses since going public. According to the company’s earnings report for Q1 2026, Trump Media & Technology Group netted a roughly $405 million loss and raised less than $900,000 in sales.
Not everyone agrees the arrangement meets the legal bar for insider trading. Shannon Devine, a spokeswoman for Trump Media & Technology Group, has pushed back on the characterization, telling Quartz that Truth API “offers customers the fastest way to ingest publicly available Truth Social data” and that critics “must have invented a new theory of ‘insider trading’ based on publicly available information.”
Classic insider trading law hinges on trading on secret, material information in breach of a fiduciary duty, and Truth Social posts are, by design, meant to become public within moments — raising real doctrinal uncertainty about whether faster access alone qualifies. But other legal experts argue the greater risk lies ahead. Richard Painter, former White House chief ethics counsel, has argued that the arrangement could violate federal law once Trump posts genuinely market-moving news — on tariffs, military action, or other policy decisions — before it’s public, with Truth Social effectively acting as a paid “tipper” on the president’s behalf. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said he plans to introduced legislation Tuesday to ban the president from selling expedited access to his statements.
