AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation have filed a lawsuit against President Trump and his staff, seeking to halt a new venture by Trump’s media company to monetize the president’s social media posts on Truth Social. Under the scheme, called Truth API, the platform would charge up to $100,000 per month for early access to the president’s posts, which frequently drive stock market volatility. The plan launched on August 1st, and reportedly at least 10 customers have signed up.

In announcing the lawsuit, Ben Muessig, editor-in-chief of The Intercept, said, “Trump is trying to enrich himself by privatizing government information that he has no right to sell. We won’t let it stand,” he said.

This comes as the Trump Media and Technology Corporation, which owns Truth Social, announced a $238 million loss during the second quarter of this year. The company is yet to be profitable.

For more, we go to Washington, D.C., where we’re joined by Brendan Ballou, CEO of the Public Integrity Project. He is a former federal prosecutor who spent two years prosecuting January 6th Capitol insurrectionists. He’s one of the lawyers representing The Intercept and Freedom of the Press Foundation in this lawsuit.

Brendan, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you can just simply explain what is not just being proposed, but what has begun on Truth Social, the president’s means of speaking to the world?

BRENDAN BALLOU: Absolutely. So, you hit the nail on the head in how you described it. The Truth Social is the president’s means of speaking to the world. If you want to know what the federal government is doing, you have to follow Truth Social. Truth Social is where the president hires and fires people. It’s where he announces wars. It’s where he announces ceasefires. It’s where he exclusively announces many, if not most, of the core initiatives of his administration.

What’s being proposed is that Truth Social is offering what’s called an API, a data feed that will give early access to his posts to those who, as you said, are willing to subscribe for $100,000 a month. This means that folks who are willing to pay that money are going to get early access to what Truth Social’s parent company itself describes as, quote-unquote, “market-moving information.” They’re going to have access to that early, which they can then use for trading. They can use it for gambling. They can use it for national security purposes, you know, if they are, for instance, working for a foreign power. So, there are all sorts of ways that the president is literally selling government information for private profit.

AMY GOODMAN: As you say in the lawsuit, “This scheme is profoundly corrupt. The President stands to gain financially by giving market-moving government information to those who are willing and able to pay his personal company,” unquote. I want to go to a clip right now of Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt assuring reporters that anything on Trump’s social media site is straight from the horse’s mouth. This is Leavitt speaking about Truth Social during a news conference in February.

PRESS SECRETARY KAROLINE LEAVITT: The post should be taken as the policy of the Trump administration. It’s coming straight from the horse’s mouth. When you see it on Truth Social, you know it’s directly from President Trump. That’s the beauty of this president in his transparency and in relaying this administration’s policies to all of you and to the rest of the world.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Brendan Ballou, talk about the significance of what she’s saying, that this is the mouthpiece of the administration, that President Trump personally will be profiting from.

BRENDAN BALLOU: Yeah, well, the White House did itself no favors by having Karoline Leavitt say that, at least from a legal perspective. So, you know, part of the case alleges that Truth Social is what you would call a public forum. A public forum is one where you have First Amendment rights, First Amendment rights to speak, First Amendment rights to access information. When the White House, when the press secretary says that this is the official place for finding information from the president, that makes it a public forum.

And so, the basic legal problem that you have here isn’t just that it’s profoundly corrupt, this scheme, but that it’s also unconstitutional, that by posting on the Truth Social platform in ways that people who pay more get earlier access, that actually interferes with people’s First Amendment rights to public information. One of the things that the First Amendment protects not only is the right to speak, but the right to equal access to government information. The government can’t discriminate who it gives information to based on, you know, who they are, what they believe, what they’re willing to pay the president. And so, really, that statement was really counterproductive for the White House, and it helps our case a great deal.

AMY GOODMAN: The named defendants in your lawsuit include President Trump and two of his closest aides, Natalie Harp, who we talked about on Democracy Now! yesterday, and Daniel Scavino, as well as the Executive Office of the President and the White House Office. Why did you choose these people and entities to sue?

BRENDAN BALLOU: Well, you know, it’s clear that this isn’t just the president typing on his phone and posting this on Truth Social. There is a whole operation that makes Truth Social the official mouthpiece of this administration, involving Dan Scavino, involving Natalie Harp, involving Harp and Scavino’s employers, the Executive Office of the President and the White House Office. So, this is really helpful in building the case that this is — that Truth Social is intimately entwined with the White House operations, and, again, helps build the argument that this is, in fact, a public forum where constitutional rights apply.

AMY GOODMAN: Trump holds the largest stake in TMTG through a revocable trust that owns about 41% of the company, a stake worth more than a billion dollars. He’s the trust’s sole beneficiary?

BRENDAN BALLOU: Yes, he is. Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: The significance of this?

BRENDAN BALLOU: Yeah, so, he’s — as the sole beneficiary, this means that he is the person that’s going to make money from this scheme. He holds 41% of the stock in the company. He is the largest shareholder. It means he probably is able to have the most power in dictating the strategy of the company. I mean, but the game is kind of given away by the fact that it’s called Trump Media. You know, it really shows that this is an arm of the president’s personal business.

And, you know, the analogy that I always use here is this isn’t like, you know, just paying an ordinary fee to access government information. This is paying a private company connected to a political official in order to access information that all of us should be able to get. It would be a little bit like having to pay the Republican National Committee in order to get access to court documents. Structurally, legally, this is no different.

AMY GOODMAN: Brendan Ballou, CEO of the Public Integrity Project, former federal prosecutor who spent two years prosecuting the January 6th Capitol rioters, now suing to stop Donald Trump’s scheme to sell early access to his Truth Social posts and pocket the profits. Brendan Ballou’s latest book is titled When Companies Run the Courts: How Forced Arbitration Became America’s Secret Justice System.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we will go to Texas and Arizona. What’s happening in Big Bend National Park? Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Barren Spell” by Pierre Locatelli.