CRIMINAL REFERRAL ASKS DOJ, FBI, AND SEC TO INVESTIGATE TRUMP MEDIA’S SALE OF EARLY ACCESS TO PRESIDENTIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS
August 21, 2026
Criminal Division
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20530
Federal Bureau of Investigation
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20535
Securities and Exchange Commission
100 F Street, N.E.
Washington, D.C. 20549
Re: Request for investigation and preservation of evidence concerning the sale of preferential access to potentially market-moving presidential announcements
To Whom It May Concern:
The Steady State is a nonpartisan organization of more than 420 former national security, intelligence, diplomatic, military, law enforcement, and homeland security officials who have served in administrations of both parties. Its members have devoted their careers to safeguarding the integrity of United States government information and of the institutions to which this referral is addressed.
I write to report conduct that appears to warrant immediate investigation by the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. (“Trump Media”), the owner and operator of Truth Social, has launched a paid data service reportedly designed to provide financial institutions and other subscribers with exceptionally rapid access to posts made by leading Truth Social accounts. The service, referred to as “Truth PSI” or the “Truth API,” was announced on July 16, 2026 and became operational on August 1, 2026. Public descriptions emphasize that participating firms will
receive the fastest available access to selected posts and expressly identify the market-moving character of such communications as a reason financial institutions will purchase the service.
The service is especially troubling because the most prominent Truth Social account belongs to the President of the United States. President Trump regularly uses his Truth Social account not merely for personal or political commentary, but to announce, describe, or communicate decisions and positions of the United States government. These communications have included statements concerning military operations, ceasefires, sanctions, tariffs, international negotiations, control of critical shipping routes, and other matters capable of immediately affecting securities, commodities, energy prices, currencies, government debt, and derivatives.
Recent examples illustrate the seriousness of the concern.
On July 10, 2026, President Trump announced through Truth Social that, although the United States had agreed to continue negotiations with Iran, the United States had informed Iran that the ceasefire was “OVER.” That announcement communicated the President’s position concerning an ongoing armed conflict and the status of an international ceasefire. Comparable announcements concerning the Iran agreement produced immediate and substantial movements in oil prices, equities, bonds, and currency markets.
President Trump has also used Truth Social to announce United States policy concerning the Strait of Hormuz, including the status of its reopening, the resumption of a naval blockade, proposed charges on cargo passing through the Strait, and the role of the United States in securing or controlling passage. Because the Strait ordinarily carries a substantial portion of internationally traded petroleum, even a brief informational advantage concerning such a presidential announcement could carry enormous financial value.
The concern is therefore not simply that Truth Social is selling an efficient means of collecting already-public social-media content. On its face, the offering appears designed to sell a time advantage in receiving communications that may constitute the first announcement of official presidential decisions.
Trump Media has publicly identified its intended customers as including banks, trading firms, hedge funds, and other market participants capable of placing automated or high-speed trades during the interval between receipt through the paid feed and dissemination to ordinary Truth Social users and the general public.
As of the service’s August 1, 2026 launch, at least five financial firms have reportedly subscribed at rates reported as ranging from a floor of approximately $60,000 per month to as much as $100,000 per month per customer, and Trump Media has declined to identify them publicly. In its second-quarter results announced on August 10, 2026, the company confirmed that “more than ten
1
customer agreements” have been signed and that Truth API “is already generating revenue.” Public reporting further indicates that the feed covers not only the President’s account but nine other high-ranking Truth Social accounts, with reporting identifying Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump among the accounts potentially included. Because the subscribers are undisclosed and the covered accounts include additional members of the President’s immediate family with reported financial interests in TMTG, both the customer profile and the roster of covered accounts warrant early investigative attention.
That arrangement raises at least four related questions requiring prompt examination.
First, investigators should determine whether paying customers will receive presidential posts before those posts are publicly available to ordinary Truth Social users. The company’s own description of the service – ”the fastest access to Truth Social’s most influential” accounts, delivered “to our customers in milliseconds,” and designed for organizations “most impacted by the cost of a delay in information” – creates a substantial concern that Truth API is not merely faster collection of public information, but preferential prepublication access. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) has already characterized the service as providing "advance access" and "prioritized delivery" and said it "would create a two-tiered system for access to government information and threaten the credibility of U.S. capital markets."
Second, investigators should examine the mechanism by which the paid feed operates. TMTG has not publicly explained the full technical sequence: whether posts appear in the paid feed before they appear on the public timeline, whether both receive the post simultaneously but the paid feed processes it faster, and how many milliseconds separate institutional access from public access. That mechanism determines whether the service is a commercial data product or an engineered information asymmetry.
Investigators should further determine who participates in decisions about which presidential communications flow through the paid feed, when those communications are released, and whether public dissemination is delayed to create or enlarge a commercially valuable interval. Relevant categories may include the President himself; White House communications personnel and other federal employees; TMTG officers, engineers, and contractors who control the API infrastructure; and any intermediaries such as public relations advisors, trust officers, family members with knowledge of the President's posting patterns, or paid subscribers with advance signaling who may participate in or benefit from timing decisions.
Third, investigators should establish whether trading, tipping, recommended trades, or caused transactions have occurred, or will occur, on the basis of information obtained through Truth API or its precursor arrangements, including any pre-launch access, test feeds, sample data, or previews provided to the customers TMTG has stated are already signed up but has declined to identify.
2
Persons whose conduct requires examination include TMTG's officers, employees, contractors, and identified customers; the President and members of his immediate family holding beneficial interests in TMTG; and any tippees or intermediaries acting in concert with the foregoing.
Investigators should further examine trading activity in equities, options, commodities, foreign exchange, and derivatives markets in the minutes preceding and following the President's market-moving Truth Social posts, including but not limited to the trading window preceding the President's March 24, 2026 Iran pivot post, when, as CBS reported, citing Bloomberg News, about 6,200 Brent and WTI futures contracts with a notional value of $580 million changed hands between 6:49 and 6:50 a.m. Eastern time, shortly before the post was published — roughly nine times the average of about 700 contracts for the same window over the preceding five trading days. Investigators should likewise examine trading in those same markets in the minutes surrounding the President’s Truth Social communications on August 1 and 2, 2026 — the first two days of Truth API's commercial operation — in which the President announced the framework of an agreement with Iran, including the immediate opening of the Strait of Hormuz; on the following trading session crude oil futures fell sharply, even as the Iranian foreign ministry denied that any negotiations were under way. Because those communications were the first market-moving presidential posts to occur after Truth API became commercially available, the timing and sequencing of their distribution to paying subscribers, and any trading by those subscribers or persons acting in concert with them, warrant particular examination.
Fourth, investigators should ascertain the extent to which revenues from Truth API directly or indirectly benefit the President, his immediate family, or persons acting in concert with him, and whether the President's official conduct is being converted into a private revenue stream.
The direct financial benefit is not in dispute. The President personally owns approximately 41 percent of Trump Media & Technology Group through a revocable trust — an arrangement that does not sever his beneficial interest and permits him to reclaim direct ownership at any time. Donald Trump Jr. serves as sole trustee of that revocable trust, with sole voting and investment power over the shares it holds — a fact directly relevant to the Rule 10b5-2(b)(3) family-relationship analysis discussed below, given that Donald Trump Jr. operates the second-largest account on Truth Social and is therefore likely to be among the ten accounts covered by Truth API, although Trump Media has not published the list of covered accounts. TMTG's interim Chief Executive Officer, Kevin McGurn, has publicly stated that Truth API is intended to "become a meaningful, ongoing source of revenue for the company, creating lasting value for shareholders." The President is TMTG's largest shareholder. Reporting indicates the service is being offered at rates of up to $100,000 per month per customer.
The predicate for those revenues is the President's official conduct. Truth Social has been the primary channel through which the President has announced United States policy on Iran, the
3
reopening and closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the imposition of transit fees on Strait shipping, the designation of the United States as "Guardian of the Hormuz Strait," ceasefire terms, and the framework of a proposed nuclear agreement. The service's commercial value derives directly from that pattern of use. Investigators should therefore examine whether governmental information, processes, personnel, equipment, access, or authority is being used to create private revenue benefiting the President, and whether the arrangement violates 18 U.S.C. § 208, the STOCK Act, the Foreign Emoluments Clause, the Domestic Emoluments Clause, or related provisions of federal ethics and anti-corruption law.
Public regulatory, congressional, and expert response as of the launch of the service and the weeks following.
In the days preceding and immediately following the August 1, 2026 launch of the Truth API service, the arrangement drew formal responses from Senate and House oversight bodies and from a former senior securities regulator. On July 21, 2026, Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, sent letters to six major financial-industry trade associations — the Bank Policy Institute, SIFMA, the Managed Funds Association, the Financial Services Forum, the Principal Traders Group, and the American Bankers Association — urging the industry to reject the service. On July 28, 2026, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) wrote to Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins requesting that the Commission examine the service under the federal prohibition on trading on the basis of material nonpublic information, and identifying the reported price floor of approximately $60,000 per month. On July 31, 2026, Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) of the House Judiciary Committee announced an investigation into the arrangement, demanding records concerning subscriber identity, pricing, contract terms, and communications between Trump Media personnel and any federal officials. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) publicly characterized the service as “an earth-shattering scandal” and the “definition of insider trading.” Earlier, on July 20, 2026, Representative Ritchie Torres (D-NY) had requested an SEC investigation, writing to SEC Chair Paul Atkins that “there is a fundamental difference between a social media platform licensing ordinary data and a company substantially owned by the sitting President selling sophisticated traders faster access to his market-moving policy announcements.” On July 24, 2026, Wall Street Journal markets reporter Gunjan Banerji reported that high-frequency trading firms described themselves as having “no choice” but to pay for the service, since declining to do so would leave them at a competitive disadvantage to firms already receiving the feed. Senator Warner made the same observation in his July 21 letter, writing that “[i]t is clear that there is a benefit for companies to subscribe to Truth API if their competitors also do so.” The Securities and Exchange Commission declined to comment on the Warren-Schiff letter, and no enforcement proceeding had been publicly announced as of this writing. The closest historical analogue counsels against reading that silence as a determination that no violation exists. In 2013, Thomson Reuters was selling early
4
access to the University of Michigan consumer survey results — among the most closely watched indicators of consumer sentiment in the United States — to high-frequency traders, who were able to access and act on that information two seconds earlier than other Thomson Reuters subscribers. The practice ended not through Commission action, but through an investigation by the New York Attorney General, which prompted Thomson Reuters to agree to immediately discontinue it. The Attorney General observed that "[t]hat two second advantage is more than enough time for these traders to take unfair advantage of their early access to this information as they execute enormous volumes of trades in the blink of an eye." If a two-second advantage in the release of a privately produced survey warranted that response, a millisecond-scale advantage in the release of official presidential communications warrants at least equivalent scrutiny. On August 3, 2026, Senator Warner introduced the No Preferential Release Of Federal Information for Transactions Act (the “NO PROFIT Act”), which would bar social media companies from selling prioritized access to the accounts of the President, Vice President, Members of Congress, and other government employees, and would make it unlawful to trade on material information obtained through such prioritized access. The introduction of dedicated legislation reflects a legislative judgment that existing authority may not adequately address this conduct going forward; it does not diminish the applicability to past and ongoing conduct of the statutes and constitutional provisions discussed below.
Professor Renée M. Jones of Boston College Law School, a former senior official of the Securities and Exchange Commission, publicly analyzed the service as appearing to run afoul of insider-trading laws. Professor Jones stated: "if the president's Truth Social posts are being monetized, and if some people get special access to them, that's misappropriated information. And by giving people his posts early, he is also violating his duty of trust and confidence." She also pointed to the STOCK Act; NPR identified the relevant securities provision as Rule 10b5-2, 17 C.F.R. § 240.10b5-2. Professor Jones further noted the counterargument that the openness of the announcement could defeat the deception element — precisely the fact-intensive question this referral asks the Commission to resolve. Her public analysis is consistent with the misappropriation theory set forth below and is referenced here not as a substitute for the investigative determinations requested in this referral, but as evidence that the questions raised herein reflect the considered judgment of a senior former securities regulator with subject-matter expertise.
Trump Media, through its spokesperson Shannon Devine, has responded by characterizing the service as offering “the fastest way to ingest publicly available Truth Social data” and arguing that criticism relies on a “new theory of 'insider trading' based on publicly available information.” That framing warrants direct investigative attention. The misappropriation theory of insider-trading liability turns not on whether information is ultimately made public, but on whether it is used for trading, before it is effectively public, in breach of a duty of trust and confidence owed to its source. The premium subscribers pay for Truth API — as TMTG's own marketing and pricing materials establish — is a millisecond-scale timing advantage over ordinary public disclosure. The information
5
at issue is the content of the President's communications during the interval before the market at large has received them; the premium subscribers pay is for receipt during that interval, and the service's commercial value is inseparable from the information's status as not yet effectively received by the market. Whether the arrangement satisfies the deception and duty elements of Rule 10b-5 and its subsidiary rules is a fact-intensive determination that requires compulsory process, not a matter that can be resolved by characterization in a corporate press statement.
Developments since the service’s launch confirm both its commercial traction and the continued absence of any announced enforcement response. On August 10, 2026, Trump Media announced its financial results for the second quarter of 2026, reporting $1.7 million in revenue and a net loss of $238.1 million. In that announcement, the company’s interim Chief Executive Officer stated: “Our new Truth API product is already generating revenue, with more than ten customer agreements signed to date.” At the reported subscription rates of $60,000 to $100,000 per month, the first ten agreements alone could, by one published estimate, imply as much as $1 million per month in recurring revenue — a sum that would surpass the company’s entire second-quarter revenue in under two months. The commercial value of the service, and its growing share of the issuer’s revenue, are inseparable from the market value of advance access to the President’s official communications.
On August 12, 2026, The Intercept Media, Inc. and Freedom of the Press Foundation filed suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against the President in his official capacity, Executive Assistant to the President Natalie J. Harp, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Daniel Scavino, the Executive Office of the President, and the White House Office. The Intercept Media, Inc. v. Trump, No. 1:26-cv-06867 (S.D.N.Y. filed Aug. 12, 2026). The complaint alleges that conditioning access to official presidential announcements on payment to a company the President controls violates the First Amendment, imposes unconstitutional conditions on the availability of a government benefit, and denies equal protection under the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause; the plaintiffs seek to enjoin the practice. That litigation proceeds on constitutional grounds and does not reach the criminal, securities, and ethics questions presented in this referral, and its allegations remain unproven. It is nonetheless notable that the plaintiffs identified White House personnel involved in the posting and release of the President’s official communications as necessary defendants — the same personnel whose role this referral asks investigators to determine. Plaintiffs’ counsel include Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, the Public Integrity Project, and Altshuler Berzon LLP.
Congressional process has meanwhile gone unanswered. The House Judiciary Committee records demand described above reportedly set an August 13, 2026 deadline for Trump Media’s production.
6
That deadline has now passed with no public indication that the company has produced the demanded records.
Depending on the facts, the arrangement may implicate several provisions of federal law. Theft, conversion, sale, or receipt of government information
Title 18, United States Code, section 641 prohibits the unauthorized embezzlement, theft, conversion, or sale of any "record, voucher, money, or thing of value" belonging to the United States, as well as the knowing receipt or retention of such property. The federal courts have held that "thing of value" in section 641 covers intangibles, and that government-produced or government-held information constitutes property protected by the statute. See United States v. Girard, 601 F.2d 69 (2d Cir. 1979) (affirming section 641 conviction for the unauthorized sale of law-enforcement information from a government database); United States v. Lambert, 446 F. Supp. 890, 895 (D. Conn. 1978) (holding that "'thing of value' in § 641, in conjunction with the explicit reference to 'any record,' covers the content of such a record"). The Department of Justice has recognized the same principle. Justice Manual, Criminal Resource Manual § 1664 ("Section 641 of Title 18 prohibits theft or receipt of stolen government information as well as theft of the documents, computer discs, etc., that contain the information.").
The Department's internal policy limiting section 641 prosecutions of information disclosure applies only when the information is obtained for the primary purpose of public dissemination and without wiretapping, trespass, or other unlawful means. That policy has no application here. Truth API is not
marketed or operated as a means of public dissemination. TMTG's own press release describes the service as delivering the President's posts to licensed financial-services partners "in milliseconds," so that those partners may act on the information before the market at large has received it. The commercial value of the service is inseparable from the information's status as not yet publicly disseminated.
The specific factual predicate is not hypothetical. The President has used Truth Social to announce United States policy concerning Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, transit fees on Strait shipping, ceasefire terms, and the framework of a proposed nuclear agreement. TMTG now sells the fastest paid access to those same communications. Investigators should therefore determine whether official presidential decisions, military determinations, diplomatic positions, tariff actions, sanctions decisions, and other governmental announcements are being knowingly converted, conveyed, or sold to private commercial subscribers before effective public dissemination, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 641.
Investigators should further determine whether any federal employee — including White House communications personnel — has disclosed such information within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. §
7
1905, which prohibits the unauthorized disclosure of certain categories of information obtained in the course of federal employment.
Unauthorized disclosure of protected government information
Title 18, United States Code, section 1905 prohibits federal personnel from disclosing information "coming to him in the course of his employment or official duties" that concerns "the trade secrets, processes, operations, style of work, or apparatus" or "the identity, confidential statistical data, amount or source of any income, profits, losses, or expenditures" of any person or firm. Numerous agency-specific statutes prohibit additional categories of unauthorized disclosure. The applicability of any particular statute will depend upon the nature and source of the information contained in individual presidential communications and upon the identity of the personnel through whose hands that information passes.
Even when information is not classified, it may remain nonpublic government information subject to statutory, regulatory, contractual, fiduciary, records-management, or employment-based restrictions until officially released. The Presidential Records Act, 44 U.S.C. §§ 2201–2209, is directly relevant. Presidential communications concerning United States policy — including the announcements at issue here — are "Presidential records" within the meaning of 44 U.S.C. § 2201, and the statute provides that "[t]he United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records." 44 U.S.C. § 2202. The United States therefore holds a statutory property interest in these communications independent of any commercial platform on which they are published. Investigators should determine whether the arrangement by which those communications are routed, on a paid basis, to private commercial subscribers before their effective public release is consistent with the statutory ownership provisions of the Presidential Records Act, with the records-management obligations imposed on the Executive Office of the President, and with any related regulatory or ethical restrictions on the use of governmental information for private commercial advantage.
Securities fraud, insider trading, and tipping
Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act, 15 U.S.C. § 78j(b), and Rule 10b-5, 17 C.F.R. § 240.10b-5, prohibit deceptive trading practices, including trading on material nonpublic information obtained through misappropriation in breach of a duty owed to the source of the information. The Supreme Court has held that "[a] person who trades in securities for personal profit, using confidential information misappropriated in breach of a fiduciary duty to the source of the information, may be held liable for violating § 10(b) and Rule 10b-5." United States v. O'Hagan, 521 U.S. 642, 652 (1997). The "fiduciary's fraud is consummated, not when the fiduciary gains the confidential information, but when, without disclosure to his principal, he uses the information to purchase or sell securities." Id. at 656. Rule 10b5-1, 17 C.F.R. § 240.10b5-1, generally treats a
8
securities transaction as made "on the basis of" material nonpublic information when the trader is aware of that information at the time of the transaction.
The duty element of the misappropriation theory is further clarified by Rule 10b5-2, 17 C.F.R. § 240.10b5-2, which the Commission adopted in 2000 to identify circumstances that give rise to a “duty of trust or confidence” for purposes of the misappropriation theory. The rule applies where a person (1) agrees to maintain information in confidence; (2) has a history, pattern, or practice of sharing confidences such that the recipient of the information knows or reasonably should know that the person communicating the information expects confidentiality; or (3) receives material nonpublic information from a spouse, parent, child, or sibling, subject to a limited affirmative defense. To the extent the President’s official communications are received by Trump Media personnel or by family members with reported financial interests in TMTG prior to public dissemination, and those recipients then cause the information to be monetized through the Truth API service, the arrangement warrants examination under each of these prongs. The reported inclusion of Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump among the covered Truth Social accounts, together with the family relationships between those account holders and the President, makes the family-relationship prong of Rule 10b5-2(b)(3) directly relevant to any factual reconstruction of how covered communications move from the President to the paid feed.
Presidential announcements affecting war, peace, tariffs, sanctions, shipping routes, government contracts, regulated industries, or particular companies can plainly be material to identifiable securities and other financial instruments. Whether insider-trading liability exists would depend on facts including the source of the information, the duties owed, the timing of public dissemination, the identity and knowledge of traders, and whether the information was misappropriated or disclosed in breach of a duty.
The structure TMTG has publicly described is, by the company's own account, designed to place paying market participants in a position to receive presidential communications during an informational interval unavailable to the public. TMTG's own press release markets Truth API as providing the "fastest access to Truth Social's most influential accounts," delivered "in milliseconds," to "financial services partners" who, in the company's own words, are "most impacted by the cost of a delay in information." TMTG's interim Chief Executive Officer has publicly confirmed that the service is designed for "high-frequency and algorithmic trading firms," has described its customers since launch as "mostly from high-frequency securities trading firms," and has stated that "markets already move on Truth Social posts." That does not by itself establish securities fraud, but it presents an obvious and foreseeable mechanism for the misuse of material nonpublic information within the meaning of Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5, and it warrants prompt examination.
Trading in commodities, futures, and swaps on nonpublic government information 9
Much of the trading most likely to be affected by the President's communications concerning Iran and the Strait of Hormuz occurs not in securities but in crude-oil futures, options, and swaps, which are governed by the Commodity Exchange Act rather than the Securities Exchange Act. Section 4c(a)(3) of the Commodity Exchange Act, 7 U.S.C. § 6c(a)(3), makes it unlawful for "any employee or agent of any department or agency of the Federal Government" who, by virtue of that position, "acquires information that may affect or tend to affect the price of any commodity in interstate commerce, or for future delivery, or any swap," and which "has not been disseminated by the department or agency of the Federal Government holding or creating the information . . . in a manner which makes it generally available to the trading public," to use the information "in his personal capacity and for personal gain" to trade futures, options, or swaps. Section 4c(a)(4), 7 U.S.C. § 6c(a)(4), extends the prohibition to imparting such information "with intent to assist another person" to trade, and to any person who "knowingly use[s] such information" so imparted. Those provisions were enacted by section 746 of the Dodd-Frank Act and amended by section 5 of the STOCK Act. More generally, section 6(c)(1) of the Act, 7 U.S.C. § 9(1), and CFTC Rule 180.1, 17 C.F.R. § 180.1, prohibit the use of "any manipulative or deceptive device or contrivance" in connection with any commodity or swap, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has applied those provisions to trading on material nonpublic information misappropriated in breach of a duty. See In re Motazedi, CFTC Order Instituting Proceedings (Dec. 2, 2015). Investigators should therefore examine, in coordination with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the same questions of duty, timing, and trading set out above as they apply to the commodities and derivatives markets, including the crude-oil trading described in this referral.
Conspiracy, aiding and abetting, wire fraud, and honest-services fraud
If two or more persons agree to obtain, disclose, sell, or trade on protected government information unlawfully, 18 U.S.C. § 371 may apply. Section 371 reaches not only conspiracies to commit substantive federal offenses but also conspiracies "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof, in any manner or for any purpose" — the doctrine known as Klein conspiracy after United States v. Klein, 247 F.2d 908 (2d Cir. 1957). A Klein conspiracy does not require that the government hold a property interest in any particular thing; it requires an agreement to obstruct or impede the lawful functions of the United States through deceit, craft, trickery, or dishonest means. See Hammerschmidt v. United States, 265 U.S. 182, 188 (1924). The lawful governmental functions potentially at issue here include the Government's control over the timing and manner of release of official information, the administration of the executive-branch ethics program, and the enforcement of the securities and commodities laws; whether any such function was in fact obstructed, and by what means, is a question for investigation rather than a conclusion this referral draws. Persons who knowingly assist an underlying federal offense may also be liable under 18 U.S.C. § 2 for aiding and abetting.
10
The use of electronic communications and interstate financial transactions to carry out a deceptive scheme may also implicate the federal wire-fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1343, depending upon the existence of deception, material misrepresentations, the property interests involved, and the purpose of the scheme. The Supreme Court's decision in Kelly v. United States, 140 S. Ct. 1565 (2020), and the Second Circuit's subsequent decision in United States v. Blaszczak, 56 F.4th 230 (2d Cir. 2022), have narrowed the property-based fraud theories as applied to certain categories of confidential government regulatory information. See also Ciminelli v. United States, 598 U.S. 306 (2023) (federal fraud statutes reach only schemes to deprive victims of "traditional property interests"). Those decisions do not, however, foreclose wire-fraud liability where the government's property interest is directly established by statute. As set forth above, the Presidential Records Act, 44 U.S.C. §§ 2201–2209, provides that "[t]he United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records." That statutory ownership provision may distinguish the property interest at issue in this matter from the predecisional regulatory information found insufficient in Blaszczak II. Whether that distinction holds — given that the President himself determines when a Presidential record is made public, and that the Act's ownership provision serves archival rather than commercial ends — is a question for prosecutors to assess; this referral identifies the theory without asserting that it would prevail.
The wire-fraud analysis is not limited to property-based theories. Title 18, United States Code, section 1346 provides that a “scheme or artifice to defraud” includes “a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.” The Supreme Court has confined the statute to its core: “§ 1346 criminalizes only the bribe-and-kickback core of the pre-McNally case law.” Skilling v. United States, 561 U.S. 358 (2010). Because an honest-services theory addresses the deprivation of the public’s intangible right to an official’s honest services rather than a deprivation of money or property, it is not subject to the property-based limitations recognized in Kelly and Blaszczak II. The structure described in this referral — subscription revenues flowing, through a company of which the President is the largest beneficial owner, from market participants paying for preferential access to the timing of the President’s official communications — warrants examination as a potential kickback-type arrangement: payments routed to a public official’s financial interest in connection with the performance, timing, and routing of official acts. Whether the elements of an honest-services offense could be established — including the requisite quid pro quo, the identity of the official or officials whose honest services are implicated, and the knowledge and intent of the paying parties — is a determination that requires compulsory process; this referral asks that it be examined, not that it be presumed.
The present public record is sufficient to warrant an investigation. It is not sufficient to establish, without further inquiry, the elements of any particular offense. Those elements can be evaluated only after compulsory process reaches internal records regarding the product's design and operation, including its technical architecture, its customer list, the timing and sequencing of relevant
11
communications, the identity of personnel involved in the routing and release of presidential communications, and the trading records of subscribers and their affiliates in the minutes surrounding market-moving presidential posts.
Financial conflicts of interest
Title 18, United States Code, section 208 prohibits an "officer or employee of the executive branch" from participating "personally and substantially" in any "particular matter" in which, to the officer's knowledge, the officer, spouse, minor child, general partner, or an organization in which the officer
serves as officer, director, trustee, general partner, or employee, or with which the officer is negotiating or has any arrangement concerning prospective employment, has a financial interest. The statute reaches participation "through decision, approval, disapproval, recommendation, the rendering of advice, investigation, or otherwise."
Since 1989, section 208 has by its own terms excluded the President and Vice President from the definitions of "officer" and "employee" that govern the statute. See 18 U.S.C. § 202(c); Ethics Reform Act of 1989, Pub. L. No. 101-194, § 401, 103 Stat. 1716, 1747, as amended by Pub. L. No. 101-280, § 5(a)(1), 104 Stat. 149, 158 (1990). Whether Congress could constitutionally apply section 208 to the President is a separate question that has been addressed by the Department of Justice within the executive branch — see Memorandum from Laurence H. Silberman, Deputy Att'y Gen., to Richard T. Burress, Office of the President, Conflict of Interest Problems Arising Out of the President's Nomination of Nelson A. Rockefeller to Be Vice President Under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment (Aug. 28, 1974); Letter from Laurence H. Silberman, Acting Att'y Gen., to the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, at 4 (Sept. 20, 1974) — but has never been reached by any court. This referral takes no position on that constitutional question. The exclusion, however, reaches only the President and Vice President themselves. Section 208 continues to apply in full to every other "officer or employee of the executive branch of the United States Government, or of any independent agency of the United States, a Federal Reserve bank director, officer, or employee, or an officer or employee of the District of Columbia," including the White House officers, communications personnel, and other executive-branch employees involved in the drafting, review, timing, and release of the Truth Social communications at the center of the arrangement described in this letter. As to any such official who personally holds a financial interest in TMTG, or who is negotiating or has an arrangement concerning prospective employment with TMTG or an affiliate, and who nonetheless participates personally and substantially in a contract or other particular matter affecting the company's revenue, section 208's prohibitions are directly engaged. Officials who hold no such interest remain bound, independently of section 208, by the Standards of Ethical Conduct — which provide that an employee "may not use their public office ... for the endorsement of any product, service, or enterprise" or "for the private gain of ... persons with whom the employee is affiliated in a nongovernmental capacity," 5 C.F.R. § 2635.702, and "may not engage in financial transactions using nonpublic information, nor allow the improper use of nonpublic information to further their own private interests or those of another," id. § 2635.703(a) — by the STOCK Act duty of trust and confidence discussed in the following section, a duty that by its terms extends to the
12
President; and, as set out above in “Conspiracy, aiding and abetting, wire fraud, and honest-services fraud,” they face exposure under 18 U.S.C. § 371 and § 2 for knowingly participating in, or aiding and abetting, the scheme described there.
Investigators should determine which officers or employees of the executive branch participate personally and substantially in the drafting, review, sequencing, or release of the President's Truth Social communications; whether those officers or employees have knowledge of the President's continuing beneficial interest in TMTG and of the commercial sale of advance access to those communications through Truth API; whether any of those officers or employees have themselves obtained financial interests in TMTG or in entities whose trading positions would be affected by the timing of presidential communications, or are negotiating or have any arrangement concerning prospective employment with any such entity; and whether written or unwritten section 208 waivers, recusals, or ethics determinations exist with respect to any such participation.
Insider trading and disclosure obligation of federal officials
The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, Pub. L. No. 112-105, 126 Stat. 291 ("STOCK Act"), affirmed and codified that Members of Congress and executive-branch employees "are not exempt from the insider trading prohibitions arising under the securities laws," and imposed disclosure and duty-of-trust obligations on federal officials with respect to nonpublic information obtained in the course of official duties. Section 4 of the STOCK Act provides that Members and employees of Congress "owe a duty arising from a relationship of trust and confidence to the Congress, the United States Government, and the citizens of the United States with respect to material, nonpublic information derived from such person's position … or gained from the performance of such person's official responsibilities." Section 9 imposes a materially similar duty on executive-branch employees. That duty is codified at 15 U.S.C. § 78u-1(h)(1), see STOCK Act § 9(b)(2)(B), 126 Stat. at 297, and the statutory definition of "executive branch employee" for this purpose expressly "includes … the President [and] the Vice President." 15 U.S.C. § 78u-1(h)(2)(A)(ii). Unlike section 208, therefore, the STOCK Act's duty of trust and confidence with respect to material nonpublic information applies to the President by its terms.
The STOCK Act clarified rather than created the misappropriation duty applicable to federal officials. Presidential communications generated in the course of official duty concerning war, peace, tariffs, sanctions, shipping routes, government contracts, regulated industries, or particular companies may constitute material nonpublic government information until the moment of effective public release. If, as the company's own marketing indicates, paying subscribers receive such communications before the general public, the arrangement would be one in which material nonpublic information generated in the course of official presidential duty is delivered to identifiable market participants during an informational interval unavailable to ordinary citizens. Whether
13
STOCK Act liability attaches in any particular instance will depend upon the identity of the personnel who cause the information to be released to paying subscribers, the duty owed by those personnel, and whether the release breaches that duty. Because the duty codified by the STOCK Act runs to the United States Government and to the citizens of the United States rather than to the President personally, the President's own assent to the arrangement would not supply the disclosure to the source that, under O'Hagan, negates deception. See 521 U.S. at 655.
Investigators should determine whether federal officials, including White House communications personnel and other executive-branch employees involved in the routing or release of presidential communications, are or will be complicit in the delivery of material nonpublic government information to paying commercial subscribers in advance of public release; whether any such official holds financial instruments the value of which could be affected by the timing of such release; and whether disclosures and duty-of-trust obligations imposed by the STOCK Act have been observed.
Emoluments received from foreign states
The Foreign Emoluments Clause, U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 8, prohibits any person "holding any Office of Profit or Trust" under the United States from accepting, without the consent of Congress, "any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State." The Office of Legal Counsel has long construed the clause to reach payments and benefits flowing to a covered federal officeholder from foreign sovereigns and from instrumentalities and enterprises owned or controlled by foreign sovereigns, whether direct or through intermediaries.
The Truth API service is marketed to "financial services partners" and is reported to be targeted at high-frequency trading firms, hedge funds, banks, and other institutional market participants. The customer profile TMTG has publicly identified is one that ordinarily includes foreign sovereign wealth funds, foreign state-owned banks, foreign state-owned or state-controlled enterprises, and foreign-domiciled trading firms. Payments from any such subscriber flow to TMTG, in which the President holds an approximately forty-one percent beneficial interest through a revocable trust that does not sever his beneficial interest and permits him to reclaim direct ownership at any time. The referral does not assert that a Foreign Emoluments Clause violation has been established; it identifies a structure through which such a violation could occur, at commercial scale, without any disclosure to Congress and without any mechanism for congressional consent.
The Foreign Emoluments Clause structure is relevant to the wire fraud, honest-services, and 18 U.S.C. § 371 conspiracy theories set out above because it bears on whether the payments described above were lawfully received; investigators should determine, as to each foreign payment or benefit implicated in the arrangement, whether Congress consented to acceptance under the Clause.
Investigators should determine the nationality, domicile, and beneficial ownership of the entities that have contracted or intend to contract for the Truth API service; whether any such entity is owned or
14
controlled, directly or indirectly, by a foreign state or foreign sovereign; the aggregate value of payments made or to be made by any such entity to TMTG; and whether any consent of Congress has been sought or obtained with respect to the President’s continuing beneficial interest in TMTG revenues derived from such subscribers.
Emoluments received from the United States or any State
The Domestic Emoluments Clause, U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 7, provides that the President "shall … receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them." Unlike the Foreign Emoluments Clause, the Domestic Emoluments Clause requires no congressional consent mechanism; it is an absolute prohibition on the receipt by the President of emoluments from the United States or from any State during the term of office.
The customer profile identified by TMTG and by public reporting on the Truth API service includes categories of institutional market participants that may include state pension funds, state investment authorities, state-chartered banks, and other domestic governmental and quasi-governmental entities. Payments from any such subscriber flow to TMTG, of which the President is the largest beneficial owner. Whether any particular payment constitutes an "Emolument" within the meaning of the clause will depend upon the identity of the payor and the nature of the arrangement, questions on which the Domestic Emoluments Clause has generated less formal Office of Legal Counsel guidance than has the Foreign Emoluments Clause but on which the constitutional text is categorical.
The Domestic Emoluments Clause structure is relevant to the wire fraud, honest-services, and 18 U.S.C. § 371 conspiracy theories set out above because it bears on whether the payments described above were lawfully received. Investigators should determine, as to each domestic-government payment or benefit implicated in the arrangement, whether the payor is a State, an instrumentality of a State, or an entity whose payments would fall within the clause’s absolute prohibition. Investigators should determine whether any Truth API subscriber is a State, an instrumentality of a State, a State-chartered or State-owned entity, or any other entity whose payments may constitute an emolument from the United States or from any State within the meaning of the clause; the aggregate value of payments made or to be made by any such entity to TMTG; and the mechanism, if any, by which the President’s beneficial interest in such payments has been disclosed to Congress and to the public.
The arrangement described above should be considered against the record of a materially similar solicitation earlier in this administration.
On or about March 12, 2026, Never Surrender Inc., a leadership political action committee registered with the Federal Election Commission and affiliated with President Trump, distributed an
15
electronic fundraising solicitation to its distribution list. The solicitation was sent from an address associated with donaldjtrump.com. Its subject line read: "I'm making this announcement public for the first time." The body offered enrollment in what it termed a "National Security Briefing Membership," and represented that members would receive the President's "private national security briefings" and "unfiltered updates on the threats facing America." The solicitation was illustrated with a photograph of the President saluting at the dignified transfer ceremony conducted at Dover Air Force Base on March 7, 2026 for six United States Army Reservists killed in an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait, and directed recipients through a donation portal with suggested contribution tiers ranging from $26 to $3,300.
The solicitation was publicly reported in the days that followed by CNN, People, Snopes, and others. On March 15, 2026, an ABC News reporter asked President Trump whether the fundraising email was "appropriate." President Trump responded: "I do." He added: "I didn't see it... we have a lot of people working for us. There is nobody that's better to the military than me." President Trump's response affirmed the appropriateness of the solicitation while simultaneously disclaiming personal knowledge of its contents. Under principles of agency, a principal who affirms a prior act done on his behalf may be treated as having ratified it, Restatement (Third) of Agency § 4.01, although ratification ordinarily requires knowledge of the material facts, id. § 4.06, and the President disclaimed having seen the solicitation. President Trump's on-the-record affirmation of the appropriateness of the March 12 solicitation is therefore relevant evidence bearing on ratification of the underlying conduct by the person in whose name the solicitation was issued; what the President knew of the solicitation when he affirmed it is a question for investigation.
On March 18, 2026, at an open hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on worldwide threats, Senator Mark Kelly presented a printed copy of the solicitation to the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe. Senator Kelly asked the witnesses: "Director Gabbard or Director Ratcliffe, do you think the public should be able to, supporters of the president should be able to pay and receive his private national security briefings?" Director Ratcliffe responded: "I don't know what the document is, but regardless of what it says, it didn't happen. The Hatch Act would prevent me, in an apolitical role, from engaging in that. I'm not aware that anything like that happened." Director Gabbard stated that she was "not familiar with that document."
Director Ratcliffe's invocation of the Hatch Act, 5 U.S.C. §§ 7321–7326, warrants brief comment. The Hatch Act governs political activity by federal employees and does not by its terms reach the President or a private issuer such as Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. Director Ratcliffe's testimony is significant for a distinct reason: it is a public statement, by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, that federal law would have barred his own participation in such an arrangement and that no such briefing occurred. That statement is relevant to the assessment of the current arrangement as evidence of contemporaneous official awareness. It also reflects the stated view of an official directly responsible
16
for the protection of intelligence information that his own participation in such an arrangement would have been barred by federal law.
Based on the publicly available record, no preliminary inquiry appears to have been opened by the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Election Commission, or the offices of the Inspectors General for the Intelligence Community. No formal referral appears to have been made by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. No preservation directive, subpoena, or document request from any enforcement or oversight body appears to have been publicly acknowledged.
The March 2026 solicitation and the Truth API service share a common structural feature: both offer paying persons access to information generated by the President in his official capacity that is not equivalently available to the general public. They differ in three respects material to the statutes cited above. First, Truth API is a formal commercial product sold by a publicly traded issuer of which the President is the largest beneficial owner, rather than a fundraising solicitation by an affiliated political committee, and therefore engages disclosure obligations to the Securities and Exchange Commission and to public shareholders that the March solicitation did not. Second, the offered informational advantage is measurable in milliseconds and is machine-consumable, permitting automated trading against the President's official communications by paying subscribers at scale. Third, the identified customer base consists of securities-regulated financial institutions whose trading against material information will produce contemporaneous transactional records subject to Commission review.
The undersigned respectfully suggests that these two episodes are properly understood as a maturing pattern of conduct rather than as isolated events. The enforcement questions raised by the earlier episode remain unresolved and are directly relevant to the assessment of the current arrangement.
Requested action
I therefore respectfully request that the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Securities and Exchange Commission promptly take the following actions.
Preservation and preliminary inquiry. Open a preliminary inquiry into the Truth API service, which became operational on August 1, 2026, and any related products, and issue preservation directives to Trump Media and Technology Group Corp., Never Surrender Inc., the identified and unidentified subscribers to the Truth API service, and any related persons or entities to preserve all records concerning the design, marketing, pricing, subscriber identity and base, informational content, and revenue of the Truth API service and the March 12, 2026 "National Security Briefing Membership" solicitation, including internal and external communications, source code, access logs, application-programming-interface records, message queues, timestamps, draft posts, publication
17
instructions, subscriber-side ingestion and trading logs, order-book records, algorithmic-trading parameters, trading records in affected instruments during windows surrounding covered presidential communications, customer records, contracts, nondisclosure agreements, pricing materials, and revenue records.
Investigative determinations. Determine, through compulsory process: whether presidential or governmental communications enter Trump Media's systems before they are formally published; the timing, at the millisecond level, at which each covered communication becomes accessible to paying subscribers as compared with ordinary users and the general public; the identity of all federal officials, White House personnel, Trump Media personnel, contractors, brokers, vendors, and customers involved in creating, approving, transmitting, marketing, purchasing, or using the service; whether government personnel or federal resources are involved in producing, transmitting, formatting, authenticating, scheduling, or prioritizing communications distributed through the service; whether Trump Media, its officers, employees, contractors, customers, or associated persons traded in affected securities, commodities, currencies, bonds, futures, options, swaps, or other instruments shortly before or after covered presidential posts; whether the President, members of his family, or persons acting in concert with him hold a direct or indirect financial interest in revenues generated by the service; and whether Trump Media's statements to investors, customers, regulators, and the public accurately disclose the timing advantage provided, the inclusion of the President's account, the company's access to prepublication information, and the associated legal and regulatory risks.
Interagency coordination. Coordinate as appropriate with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — whose jurisdiction over the crude-oil futures, options, and swaps markets described above makes it a necessary participant in any trading review — the Office of Government Ethics, the Federal Election Commission, the offices of the Inspectors General for the Intelligence Community and the Department of Justice, and any other authorities whose jurisdiction is implicated.
Urgency
Particular urgency is warranted. The Truth API service became operational on August 1, 2026, has now operated continuously for nearly three weeks, and by the company’s own August 10, 2026 announcement has more than ten customer agreements signed and is already generating revenue. Automated trading against covered presidential communications may now occur within milliseconds of publication, and the transactional records necessary to reconstruct any such trading exist only in the private systems of Trump Media, its identified customers, and their affiliates. The opening days and weeks of the service's operation are therefore of unique evidentiary significance: order-book data, message-queue logs, application-programming-interface access records, subscriber
18
communications, and related transactional records generated in this interval constitute the primary basis for reconstructing whether covered communications were delivered to paying subscribers in advance of effective public release and whether trading occurred on the basis of such information.
Without preservation directives issued immediately, the evidentiary record most probative of the questions raised in this referral may be irretrievably lost or altered in the ordinary course of the service's operation, of subscriber trading systems, and of standard institutional data-retention schedules.
Conclusion
This referral does not presume that any identified person has committed a crime. It asks the responsible authorities to determine whether a publicly traded company in which the President is the largest beneficial owner is offering, for a fee, preferential access to the timing of the President's official communications, and, if so, whether the creation, sale, or use of that advantage violates federal criminal, securities, ethics, or disclosure laws. The now-operational arrangement presents an extraordinary risk that the timing of official presidential communications is being converted into a private commodity sold to sophisticated market participants. The integrity of governmental decision-making and the fairness of the financial markets require prompt examination.
Please confirm receipt of this referral and advise, to the extent permitted by law, whether it has been directed to the appropriate investigative components.
Respectfully submitted,
Steven A. Cash
Executive Director, The Steady State
(212) 685-9660