YouTube has agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump over his suspension from the platform following the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
According to a filing in federal court in Oakland, Alphabet-owned YouTube will pay $22 million to the Trust for the National Mall, to be used for the construction of a White House state ballroom, one of Trump’s pet projects since returning to office. Another $2.5 million will go to other plaintiffs, including American Conservative Union, Andrew Baggiani, Austen Fletcher, Maryse Veronica Jean-Louis, Frank Valentine, Kelly Victory and Naomi Wolf.
Trump has extracted settlements from other platforms that suspended his accounts, including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, now X.
According to the filing, the settlement “shall not constitute an admission of liability or fault on the part of the Defendants or their agents, servants, or employees, and is entered into by all Parties for the sole purpose of compromising disputed claims and avoiding the expenses and risks of further litigation.” Google/YouTube also did not agree to any product or policy changes.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on the settlement.
A Google spokesperson did not comment.
When YouTube suspended Trump in 2021, shortly after January 6th, the video platform said in a statement, “After review, and in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence, we removed new content uploaded to Donald J. Trump’s channel for violating our policies. It now has its 1st strike & is temporarily prevented from uploading new content for a minimum of 7 days.” The account was reinstated in 2023.
The $200 million White House ballroom project will add 90,000 square feet of space to the complex, dramatically reshaping the grounds. Corporations reportedly have contributed tens of millions to the construction.
But Alphabet is just the latest in a line of companies who have decided to settle Trump lawsuits rather than face lengthy litigation — not to mention stay in the president’s good graces. Their settlement comes on the heels of figures including Barack Obama and Kamala Harris criticizing corporate executives for capitulating to the administration’s demands. In July, Paramount Global settled a Trump lawsuit for $16 million, even though its attorneys had previously called it baseless. The litigation was viewed as a hurdle to overcome as the company sought FCC approval of its merger with Skydance.
In the case of YouTube, Trump’s lawsuit was viewed by some legal experts as dubious, as the platform is a private actor that, in suspending Trump, had cited a violation of its policies as they existed at the time.
Trump’s litigation was “administratively closed” in 2023, dormant until February, when X paid a reported $10 million to settle the president’s litigation.
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