‘It’s so corrosive to democracy’: Over 50 federal prosecutors speak out against Trump’s $100,000 a month ‘insider trading’ scheme

Trump's plan to sell earlier access to his Truth Social posts for six-figures has hit a new wrinkle. More than 50 former federal prosecutors and law enforcement officials are asking a federal judge to block Donald Trump's $100,000 monthly service for early access to Truth Social posts, arguing that the arrangement could implicate several federal criminal statutes—including giving traders a paid window into potentially market-moving government information.

The 53 former prosecutors and law enforcement agents filed an amicus brief Monday in the Southern District of New York in support of a preliminary injunction from The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation. The group includes former officials who worked on public corruption and public integrity matters at the Justice Department, FBI and U.S. attorneys' offices across 11 presidential administrations, both Republican and Democratic. Collectively, they say they have more than 880 years of government service.

"It's so corrosive to democracy and to the public interest when we see the president financially benefitting from his official role," Renata O'Donnell, senior legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center which worked with Singleton Schreiber on the filing, told Fortune . "We're in an environment where we all want to be looking to the founders, right? They came over because they were in a situation where they saw that a government all in the hands of one person was not a success—and they tried to insulate the president constitutionally and through a variety of other protections to make sure he could be independent."

"There is no legitimate, let alone significant, government interest in allowing public officials to profit personally by selling early access to official government announcements," the filing read. "But Truth Social's new scheme to charge up to $100,000 per month for users to get early access to messages from the President and other officials on the platform seeks to do precisely that."

Truth API is a data licensing product launched by Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social. The company had pitched the service to financial institutions and trading firms as a way to receive posts from prominent Truth Social accounts before they are broadly available. Reports estimate nearly a dozen firms have already signed up for the $100,000 a month service.

"I'll be blunt," Gian Luca Clementi, an economics professor at NYU Stern School of Business, previously told Fortune regarding Trump's subscription service. "This is insider trading by definition."