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(AP) — YouTube, owned by Google, has consented to pay $24.5 million to resolve a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump after the platform suspended his account following the January 6, 2021 Capitol attacks after the election that saw him departing the White House for four years.
The settlement from the over four-year-old lawsuit allocates $22 million for Trump to donate to the Trust for the National Mall and the creation of a White House ballroom, as indicated by court documents submitted Monday. The remaining $2.5 million is designated for other parties involved, including writer Naomi Wolf and the American Conservative Union.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is the third significant tech firm to settle a group of lawsuits Trump initiated, alleging he was unjustly silenced after his first presidential term concluded in January 2021. He filed comparable lawsuits against Meta Platforms, formerly Facebook, and Twitter before its acquisition by billionaire Elon Musk in 2022 when it was rebranded as X.
Meta agreed to pay $25 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit regarding his 2021 Facebook suspension, and X consented to resolve the lawsuit Trump initiated against Twitter for $10 million. Legal specialists had anticipated Trump stood little chance of succeeding in the cases against Meta, Twitter, and YouTube when filed.
After acquiring Twitter for $44.5 billion, Musk later significantly contributed to Trump’s victorious 2024 campaign, leading to his re-election. Subsequently, Musk undertook a cost-reduction campaign that removed thousands of federal government employees before the pair had a severe fallout. Both Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg were among the tech leaders who supported Trump during his second inauguration in January, an act widely seen as a signal of the industry’s intention to collaborate more closely with the presidency than during his initial term.
ABC News, on the other hand, agreed to pay $15 million in December toward Trump’s presidential library to resolve a defamation suit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ erroneous on-air statement that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. Moreover, in July, Paramount chose to pay Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit concerning editing at CBS’ renowned “60 Minutes” news program.
The settlement does not constitute an admission of liability, the filing says. Google confirmed the settlement but declined to comment beyond it.
Google declined to comment on the reasons for the settlement., but Trump’s YouTube account has been restored since 2023. The settlement is will barely dent Alphabet, which has a market value of nearly $3 trillion — an increase of about $600 billion, or 25%, since Trump’s return to the White House.
The disclosure of the settlement came a week before a scheduled Oct. 6 court hearing to discuss the case with U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers in Oakland, California.
