OutSpent

The Oval · the presidency, priced

The office now has a price list.

We track money in Congress. This page tracks it one building over. In 2026 the sitting President disclosed 3,642 personal stock trades in a single quarter, reported $1.4 billion in crypto income, and the company he owns 41% of began selling traders the fastest access to his market-moving posts for $100,000 a month. Every number on this page is public record.

Cost of the fastest feed
$100k/mo
Or $60k a month on a three-year deal.
Cost for everyone else
$0
Same posts. You just read them second.
When policy news is a product, someone has to be the last to hear it. That is the business model.Our read

The pattern

Our read

Four things now come in two tiers.

Read the sections below in any order and the same shape keeps appearing. Something that used to be one thing for everyone is now two things, and which one you get depends on what you can pay. We are not calling that a crime. We are pointing out that it is a structure, and structures outlive administrations.

Market-moving news
$100,000 a month buys the fastest feed.
Free, and you read it after the machines have traded on it.
A federal conviction
Donations and paid clemency lobbying have preceded pardons, on the public record.
Everyone else files a petition with the Office of the Pardon Attorney and waits.
Conflict-of-interest law
§ 208 does not reach the President or Vice President.
It binds every other executive branch employee, down to the career staff.
Restitution owed to victims
A pardon can erase it. Trevor Milton owed about $680M.
The defrauded shareholders collect nothing and have no appeal.

The $100,000 feed

They sold the head start.

First, the correction that matters. The White House is not the vendor. Trump Media & Technology Group, a publicly traded company, sells Truth API. The President holds roughly 41% of it through a revocable trust of which he is the sole beneficiary. The government is not taking the money. The officeholder benefits anyway. That structure is the whole story, and it is why the arrangement is hard to attack with existing law.

  1. 01Jul 16, 2026

    The product is announced

    Trump Media unveils Truth API, a licensed real-time feed of posts from the 10 most influential Truth Social accounts, pitched to banks and trading firms.

    CNN Business
  2. 02Jul 18, 2026

    The price leaks

    $100,000 a month for the fastest tier. A discounted $60,000 a month is pitched to firms that sign a three-year commitment.

    CNBC
  3. 03Jul 28, 2026

    Two senators ask the SEC to look

    Warren and Schiff write SEC Chair Paul Atkins asking for a legal review before launch, citing laws on insider trading and market manipulation.

    Senate Banking (minority)
  4. 04Jul 2026

    The House opens an investigation

    Judiciary Ranking Member Jamie Raskin launches an investigation into the arrangement and the President's financial interest in it.

    House Judiciary Democrats
  5. 05Aug 1, 2026

    It goes live anyway

    Truth API launches with round-the-clock coverage and an archive back to 2022. Truth Social says at least five firms have signed up at the $100,000 tier.

    NPR
The company's position
Trump Media

“Truth API is designed to deliver posts the instant they are made public to everyone, not before.”

The company frames it as a licensed distribution feed and a high-margin recurring revenue stream, not an early look.

France 24
The objection
Warren & Schiff

“An outrageous abuse of the President's office for his personal benefit that undermines everyday investors and the integrity of our markets.”

Their letter asks the SEC to determine whether the product runs afoul of insider trading and market manipulation law.

CNBC

What it actually means

Our read
  • Both statements can be true. Trump Media can be publishing to everyone at once and still be selling an edge. A firm with a wired-in machine feed acts on a post before a human can finish reading it. Simultaneous delivery and unequal advantage are not in conflict.
  • The market-moving part is the product. The pitch is not that the posts are interesting. It is that they move prices, which means the value being sold is the price impact of official statements about tariffs, rates, and companies.
  • Insider trading law is a poor fit, which is the problem. Those rules generally target trading on confidential information in breach of a duty. A public post is not confidential. This is a gap, not a loophole being exploited, and gaps get closed by legislation, not enforcement.
  • It sets a price on access. Once presidential communications carry a subscription fee, the speed of official information becomes a thing that can be bought. That is new, and it will outlast whoever holds the office.

The referees

“The SEC is looking into it.” Who can fire the SEC?

Every section above ends the same way: someone is investigating. That reassurance is worth exactly as much as the investigator's job security. On June 29, 2026 the Supreme Court changed that answer for most of the government, and the change is far bigger than who got appointed to what.

June 29, 2026 · Trump v. Slaughter · 6–3

The end of the independent agency

The Court overruled Humphrey's Executor, a 91-year-old precedent that let Congress protect agency commissioners from being fired at will. Chief Justice Roberts called it “a result in search of a rationale.” The holding: the Constitution vests the entire executive power in the President, so officers exercising it must remain subject to his removal. The for-cause protections at the FTC, the NLRB, the SEC and dozens of similar commissions no longer stand.

The agency asked to review whether Truth API is legal is now staffed by people the President can fire for reviewing it.Our read
Sidley Austin
SEC
Asked to review Truth API
Chair Paul Atkins, appointed by the President.
Changed 2026Since June 29, 2026, removable at will. The for-cause protection was struck down.
DOJ
Would bring any federal case
Todd Blanche, the President's personal criminal defense attorney at the 2024 trial that produced 34 felony convictions. Confirmed Deputy AG in March 2025, named acting AG in April 2026 after Pam Bondi was fired, nominated for the permanent job that June.
Serves at the President's pleasure. Always has.
FTC, NLRB, FERC
The other independent agencies
Commissioners confirmed by the Senate to fixed terms.
Changed 2026Removable at will. Their independence was the thing the June ruling ended.
Federal Reserve
Sets rates, regulates banks
Chair Kevin Warsh, nominated Jan 30, 2026, confirmed 54–45, sworn in May 22, 2026. Jerome Powell remains a governor until January 2028.
Still protected. The Court carved the Fed out on the same day it stripped everyone else.
The part that cuts the other way

The Fed held.

On the same day, in Trump v. Cook, the Court split 5–4 and refused to let the President remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook while her case proceeds. It expressly carved the Federal Reserve out of the rule it had just announced. Trump had moved to fire Cook in August 2025 over alleged mortgage misrepresentations predating her 2021 nomination, a removal attempt without precedent in the Fed's 112-year history. She is still in her seat.

The Fed chair is a presidential nominee, and always has been. Jerome Powell was Trump's own pick in 2018 and then spent years publicly refusing him on rates. Appointment is not the same as control, which is why the removal power was the thing worth fighting over, and why the Fed keeping its protection is the one real check left standing in this story.

If we told you every referee had fallen, we would be doing the thing we criticize. One did not.Our read
Morgan Lewis

What he owns

The 927-page disclosure.

Released by the Office of Government Ethics on June 30, 2026, covering 2025. Federal disclosure only requires broad value bands, not exact figures, so every number below is a floor or a range, never a precise total.

$1.4B
Crypto income, 2025

Reported in the annual disclosure, driven largely by token ventures. Roughly $635M of it tied to sales of the $TRUMP meme coin.

NBC News
$515M
World Liberty Financial tokens

Proceeds from token sales tied to the crypto venture, plus roughly $65M more from related equity sales.

Time
$290M+
Golf and club properties

Income from the resort and club business, the traditional core of the Trump Organization.

CNBC
114.75M
Trump Media shares, in trust

Transferred Dec 17, 2024 to the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, of which he is the sole beneficiary. Roughly 41% of the company that sells Truth API.

OGE Form 278e

Why the Trump Media stake matters most. It is the line that connects this section to the one above. The asset generating the $100,000-a-month subscriptions is the same asset sitting in his trust. Revenue from selling access to his posts flows to a company he is the sole beneficiary of.

Clemency

The other price list.

The pardon power is absolute, unreviewable, and answerable to no court. It is the one presidential authority with no check at all, which makes it the sharpest test of whether an office is being run for the public or for its customers. What follows is the documented record: who was pardoned, and what they or their allies had given or spent. Whether one caused the other is exactly what Congress is investigating and what nobody has established.

Changpeng “CZ” Zhao
Pardoned Oct 23, 2025
~$800k in clemency lobbying

Binance founder, pleaded guilty in 2023 to anti-money-laundering violations. Binance spent roughly $800,000 on lobbying tied to clemency, including $450,000 to a firm run by a longtime associate of Donald Trump Jr. Binance had worked with the Trump family's World Liberty Financial.

Time
Trevor Milton
Pardoned March 2025
$3M donated after conviction

Nikola founder, convicted in 2022 of misleading investors. He and his wife donated at least $3 million to the 2024 campaign and aligned groups after the conviction. The pardon wiped out roughly $680 million in restitution owed to the shareholders he defrauded.

Washington Post
Adam Kidan
Pardoned Jul 3, 2026
3 days after a donation

A central figure in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. He donated to a congressman's leadership PAC on June 30 and was pardoned three days later. He gave roughly $270,000 to Trump-affiliated committees in the 2024 cycle and has hosted Mar-a-Lago fundraisers.

NOTUS
17 recipients, under investigation
Opened May 7, 2026
Pay-to-play questions

A bicameral congressional investigation is examining 17 clemency grants, requesting communications with federal officials and records of donations to the President or groups in his orbit. No findings have been issued.

CBS News

Who actually pays for a pardon

Our read

Not the taxpayer. When clemency erases a restitution order, the bill lands on the people the fraud was committed against. Trevor Milton's pardon cancelled roughly $680 million owed to shareholders he was convicted of misleading. They had a judgment, and then they did not, and there is nothing to appeal. That is the part of the pardon story that never makes the headline.

The trades

3,642 trades in 84 days.

Filed May 8, 2026 on OGE Form 278-T, covering January 6 to March 30. For scale, the previous filing showed 191 transactions across the final two months of 2025. This is the first time a sitting president has disclosed individual securities trading at this volume while in office.

3,642
transactions
2,346
purchases
1,296
sales
$212M–$695M
disclosed value
Most frequently traded names
MSFT17–22 tradesAMZN17–22 tradesMETA17–22 tradesNFLX17–22 tradesORCL17–22 tradesAMD17–22 trades

Technology led every sector, with at least $43M purchased and $24M sold. On March 23 alone the filing shows 283 purchases against 17 sales, a date that coincides with index rebalancing.

The claim

“All of our assets are invested in a blind trust by the largest financial institutions in broad market indexes.”

Eric Trump, on X, May 15, 2026, replying to Sen. Warren.

The filing

A broad-market index fund produces one line item. The disclosure the President signed lists 3,642 individual transactions in named companies including Nvidia, AMD and Palantir. The Trump Organization's position is that “neither President Trump, his family, nor The Trump Organization plays any role in selecting, directing, or approving specific investments.”

Yahoo Finance

Trades that sat close to decisions

These are timing coincidences drawn from the public filing and public policy dates. Nobody has established what anyone knew or when. We list them because proximity is checkable and a reader can weigh it.

Nvidia
Bought Jan 6, 2026

$500,001 to $1,000,000 purchased. Export controls on the company's chips were relaxed about a week later.

CBS News
Palantir
Bought March 2026

Hundreds of thousands of dollars purchased. The President publicly praised the company on April 7.

CBS News
Eli Lilly
Bought Q1 2026

Up to roughly $730,000 purchased, coinciding with favorable federal decisions on GLP-1 drugs.

CBS News
Two professional money managers reviewed the volume and said no legitimate strategy explains thousands of trades in a quarter. One offered a benign explanation: tax-loss harvesting through direct indexing.Our read

Post to market

Why the feed is worth $100k.

Nobody pays six figures a year for social media unless the posts move money. The clearest public example is on the record.

April 9, 2025
That morning

“THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!”

1:18 p.m.

A post announcing a 90-day pause on most of the newly announced tariffs.

S&P 500, that day
+9.5%

Stocks turned sharply higher within minutes of the 1:18 p.m. post. One of the largest single-day gains in recent memory.

What we will and will not claim. Our price data is daily closes, so we can honestly show day-scale moves and nothing finer. The Truth API advantage is measured in milliseconds, which no free data source can verify. We are building a running post-to-market ledger and will publish it only with timestamps we can stand behind. Until then, one documented case, clearly labeled, beats a wall of numbers we cannot defend.

The norm

No law required it. Every president did it anyway.

The blind trust is not a statute. It is a habit, started by Lyndon Johnson in 1963 and kept by both parties for sixty years, because a president who cannot see his holdings cannot be accused of steering policy toward them.

Lyndon Johnson
Pioneered the presidential blind trust in 1963.
Jimmy Carter
Put the peanut farm in a blind trust before being sworn in.
Ronald Reagan
Blind trust.
George H. W. Bush
Blind trust.
Bill Clinton
Blind trust.
George W. Bush
Blind trust.
Barack Obama
No blind trust, but held Treasuries, index funds and college savings. Little to conflict with.
Donald Trump
Declined a true blind trust. 3,642 individual transactions disclosed in one quarter.
The rule that does not apply

18 U.S.C. § 208

The federal criminal conflict-of-interest statute bars executive branch officials from working on matters that touch their own financial interests. By its own definitions it does not apply to the President or the Vice President. Congress wrote that carve-out deliberately, on the reasoning that the job is too broad to recuse from, and on the expectation that presidents would hold themselves to a higher standard voluntarily. The same statute does not reach members of Congress or federal judges either.

An honor system works right up until someone declines the honor.Our read

Around him

It is not one desk.

The President is one filer. Senior appointees file too, and unlike him they are covered by § 208. Their disclosures are where the conflicts get specific.

1,600+ appointees on file

ProPublica published roughly 3,200 disclosure records covering the President, the Vice President and more than 1,500 appointees, and documented a pattern of financial ties to the industries those officials regulate.

ProPublica

Sales before the tariff news

Attorney General Pam Bondi and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy were among executive branch officials who sold stock before tariff announcements that moved markets. What any of them knew, and when, is not established.

ProPublica

Regulators holding what they regulate

Reported examples include a Pentagon deputy secretary overseeing a $151B missile defense program while retaining a financial relationship with a private equity firm whose portfolio companies win work on it.

ProPublica

April 9, 2025

“It's Main Street's turn.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it to a room of bankers at the American Bankers Association's Washington Summit. It became the administration's signature economic line, repeated for a year afterward. Here it is in full, next to what else happened that day.

The promise

“For the last four decades, basically since I began my career in Wall Street, Wall Street has grown wealthier than ever before, and it can continue to grow and do well. But for the next four years, the Trump agenda is focused on Main Street. It's Main Street's turn. It's Main Street's turn to hire workers. It's Main Street's turn to drive investment, and it's Main Street's turn to restore the American Dream.”

Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury
CNBC
The same day
  • That morning
    “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!”
  • 1:18 p.m.
    The 90-day tariff pause is posted. Markets turn sharply higher within minutes.
  • Close
    S&P +9.5%
    Roughly a year later, the fastest access to posts like that one went on sale for $100,000 a month.

We are not claiming an order of events between the speech and the post. Both are on the public record for April 9, 2025.

A 9.5% day belongs to whoever was already positioned. Main Street was not the one holding the phone.Our read

Same standard, every desk.

Our read

We hold this page to the standard we hold the Senate to, and it is the same standard we would apply to any occupant of this office. The rest of this site documents members of both parties trading around their own committee work, and the numbers there are not flattering to anyone. A president trading individual stocks is a bigger version of a problem Congress has refused to fix for itself, and the bills that would fix it cover both branches at once. If you think this page is partisan, check the Senate pages and see who is on them.

HONEST Act

Bipartisan. Would bar stock ownership by members of Congress, the President and the Vice President, effective January 2029.

Restoring Trust in Public Servants Act

Sen. Andy Kim's bill. Would ban individual stock ownership across all three branches.

Every number above is public record — here's where

APINPR — Truth Social launches paid early access to Trump postsAPICNBC — Trump Media pitched $100,000/month fee for fastest feedAPIWashington Post — Trump stands to profit off U.S. policy announcementsSECSenate Banking (minority) — Warren & Schiff letter to SEC Chair AtkinsHouseHouse Judiciary Democrats — Raskin investigation announcementTradesCBS News — 3,600 stock trades in 3 months, broken downTradesOGE Form 278-T, filed May 8, 2026 (primary document)TradesEuronews — disclosure reveals gains on Big Tech betsOwnsOGE Form 278e annual disclosure, released June 30, 2026 (primary document)OwnsCNBC — annual disclosure shows crypto-related incomeOwnsNBC News — $1.4B in crypto earnings, largely meme coinsLawCongressional Research Service — conflict of interest regulation in the executive branchLaw18 U.S.C. § 208 — acts affecting a personal financial interestCourtSidley Austin — the end of the independent agency, Humphrey's Executor overruledCourtCongressional Research Service — Trump v. Slaughter and for-cause removalCourtMorgan Lewis — the ruling reshapes removals and carves out the FedCourtCNBC — Supreme Court rules Trump cannot fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook, for nowFedFederal Reserve — Warsh sworn in as chair, May 22, 2026DOJABC News — Bondi replaced as attorney general, Blanche steps inNormWashington Post — what Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush didTeamProPublica — financial disclosures from the President and 1,600 appointeesQuoteYahoo Finance — Eric Trump's “broad market indexes” claim vs. the filingQuoteCNBC — Bessent: “it's Main Street's turn,” April 9, 2025PardonCBS News — congressional investigation into 17 clemency grantsPardonTime — what to know about the pardon of Binance's founderPardonWashington Post — pardons wipe out payments to defrauded victimsPardonNOTUS — megadonor pardoned three days after a donationPardonForbes — the donors and business allies who have been pardoned

Facts ruthless, analysis labeled.Trade counts, dollar ranges, dates and quotes above come from federal disclosure filings and published reporting, each linked to its source. Federal disclosure reports value in broad bands, so dollar figures are ranges, not exact amounts. Lines marked “Our read” are our interpretation, not new facts. Nothing here alleges a crime. The Warren and Schiff letter is a request for an SEC review, the Raskin action and the bicameral pardon inquiry are investigations, and no finding of wrongdoing has been made against any person or company named on this page. Pardons are a lawful and unreviewable presidential power; we report donations, lobbying spending and clemency dates as documented facts and do not assert that one caused another. Trump Media states that Truth API delivers posts publicly and not in advance, and that statement is quoted in full above. The Trump Organization states that the President and his family play no role in selecting specific investments, also quoted above. Non-partisan: the target is a structure both parties built and both parties decline to fix. Nothing here is investment advice.