Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) arrive for a round of voting at the U.S. Capitol on September 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Kent Nishimura | Getty Images
Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff have asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate: Trump Media & Technology Group is breaking the law by selling faster access to President Donald Trump’s truthful social posts.
“This appears to be an outrageous abuse of the presidency for personal gain, enriching Wall Street and other wealthy insiders while undermining everyday investors and the health of the markets,” Democratic senators said in a letter to SEC Chairman Paul Atkins dated Tuesday.
They asked Atkins to complete a legal analysis of Trump Media’s new service, which includes laws “prohibiting insider trading and market manipulation,” before its Aug. 1 launch.
A Trump Media spokesperson pushed back in a statement to CNBC, accusing Senate Democrats of mischaracterizing the service “either out of ideological opposition to free markets or a failure to grasp the distinction between public and private information, or perhaps both.”
The SEC declined to comment on the letter from Warren, a member of the Senate Banking Committee of Massachusetts, and Schiff of California, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
President Trump’s family is the largest shareholder in the publicly traded company, which trades under the name TMTG and on the Nasdaq as DJT, the president’s initials. The company’s stock, once seen as a barometer of Trump’s political standing, has fallen about 80% since it began trading in late March 2024.
TMTG operates Truth Social, the social media platform where President Trump’s account is the most followed, and the company has expanded into many other areas, including cryptocurrencies and fusion power generation.
Mr. Trump frequently posts policy announcements and other newsworthy information, including the Iran war, causing global markets to soar and plummet. He has also repeatedly used his account to promote individual stocks.
On July 16th, TMTG announced the Truth API. This is a so-called licensed data service that provides “real-time access to posts from top-ranked Truth Social accounts.”
TMTG Interim CEO Kevin McGahn said in a statement that the service will “deliver the most market-moving truthful, licensed real-time feeds directly on our platform.”
According to Reuters, TMTG is considering charging up to $100,000 a month for the service.
Before retaking the White House, President Trump transferred more than 114 million shares of TMTG stock to a revocable trust overseen by his family, but he still indirectly owns the stock.
The new service “could undermine the integrity of the capital markets,” Warren and Schiff wrote to Atkins.
The senators said Trump is “looking to profit from the launch of this service,” as well as “corporations and wealthy individuals who pay subscription fees” to get Trump’s posts faster.
They warned that the Truth API could be of particular benefit to high-frequency trading firms. “While financial firms and analysts relied on manual monitoring of Truth Social, the API automatically delivers Truth Social posts 24/7 directly to users who simply pay upfront for additional millisecond notifications.”
