Yet again, an appalling example of profiteering off the nation’s highest office by Donald Trump and his family illustrates that the legal system is not equipped to address abuses of executive power. In our system, either Congress acts or there is no remedy any time soon, perhaps ever.
To summarize, the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) that Trump formed to own and operate his Truth Social media platform is selling early access to his posts — assertions about government policy that are known to cause significant swings in market prices — to high-frequency traders (HFTs) for up to $100K per month. This enables the HFTs to execute trades at computerized scale an instant before Trump’s posts are accessible to the general public (i.e., to Truth Social subscribers who haven’t paid the special fee, some of whom customarily repost Trump’s assertions on more popular media outlets). The pricey fees, which are well worth it to the HFTs given the hefty profits they can turn trading off this early access to material information, generate millions of dollars in revenue for TMTG — of which Trump owns 41 percent.
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