YouTube to pay $24.5M to settle Trump account suspension suit
Google’s YouTube has agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit President Donald Trump brought after the video site suspended his account following the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the Capitol.
The settlement of the more than four-year-old case earmarks $22 million for Trump to contribute to the Trust for the National Mall and a construction of a White House ballroom, according to court documents filed on Monday. The remaining $2.5 million will be paid to other parties involved in the case, including the writer Naomi Wolf and the American Conservative Union.
Volley of lawsuits
Alphabet, the parent of Google, is the third major technology company to settle a volley of lawsuits that Trump brought for what he alleged had unfairly muzzled him after his first term as president ended in January 2021. He filed similar cases against Facebook parent Meta Platforms and Twitter before it was bought by billionaire Elon Musk in 2022 and rebranded as X.
Meta agreed to pay $25 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit over his 2021 suspension from Facebook and X agreed to settle the lawsuit that Trump brought against Twitter for $10 million. When the lawsuits against Meta, Twitter and YouTube were filed, legal experts predicted Trump had little chance of prevailing.
Falling out
After buying Twitter for $44.5 billion, Musk became a major contributor to Trump’s successful 2024 campaign. He then led a cost-cutting effort that purged thousands of workers from the federal government payroll before the two had a bitter falling out.
Both Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg were among the tech leaders who lined up behind Trump during his second inauguration in January in a show of solidarity that was widely interpreted as a sign of the industry’s intention to work more closely with the president.
