U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres (D-NY) has formally requested that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigate whether Trump Media & Technology Group’s upcoming Truth API violates federal securities laws. The product, set to launch on August 1, will sell Wall Street firms real‑time access to posts from President Donald Trump’s Truth Social account and nine other trending profiles—including the White House, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—for licensing fees reportedly as high as $100,000 per month (or $60,000 per month on a three‑year plan).
In a letter sent to SEC Chair Paul Atkins on Monday, Torres argued that because Trump still holds approximately 41% of Trump Media through a revocable trust, charging traders for a speed advantage on his market‑moving statements is “fundamentally different” from an ordinary social‑data feed. He urged the SEC to determine whether the API’s structure and marketing run afoul of federal securities laws, market‑manipulation rules, or broker‑dealer obligations, and called for coordination with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Office of Government Ethics. The congressman also pressed for clarity on whether the agency has opened an official review.
The pushback comes amid broader ethics debates over President Trump’s financial interests. Democrats have pointed to Trump’s disclosed $1.4 billion in crypto‑related income for 2025 and a reported $500 million UAE‑linked investment in the family crypto venture World Liberty Financial. Meanwhile, negotiations over the CLARITY Act—a crypto regulatory bill facing an August deadline—stall over enforcement provisions and ethics language covering how officials profit from digital assets while in office. Trump Media defended the API as “the fastest way to ingest publicly available Truth Social data,” but critics—including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who called it a form of insider trading, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who said it is “plowing new ground”—see the product as giving wealthy institutions an unfair edge over retail investors.
