YouTube has now reportedly agreed to pay President Donald J. Trump $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit stemming from the platform’s decision to bar him from posting videos after the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, according to an exclusive report by The Wall Street Journal.
The settlement marks the latest in a series of legal victories by Mr. Trump against Big Tech companies, which had sought to silence him in the wake of the 2020 election.
YouTube fully reinstated his account in 2023, two years after the initial ban.
Mr. Trump filed suit against the company and its chief executive in 2021. Court documents reviewed by the Journal indicate that the bulk of the payout—$22 million—will be directed to the Trust for the National Mall.
The funds are earmarked for construction of a Mar-a-Lago-style ballroom at the White House, an addition the administration has said will cost roughly $200 million. The White House confirmed the project would be financed by donations from Mr. Trump himself and what it described as “other patriot donors.”
The remaining $2.5 million will go to other plaintiffs in the case, including the American Conservative Union and writer Naomi Wolf. The settlement does not specify attorney fees.
YouTube, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, is “the final Big Tech company to settle a trio of lawsuits Trump brought against social-media platforms in the months after he left the White House,” according to the Journal. The settlements underscore how technology giants, once emboldened to deplatform a sitting president, are now backing down under legal, political, and market pressure.
The timing is notable. Google is currently under scrutiny by the Justice Department, which is pushing to break up its advertising business after a federal judge ruled this spring that the company had monopolized the industry.
Mr. Trump has also reached settlements with two other platforms. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, agreed to pay $25 million, most of which will go toward the construction of his presidential library.
Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, agreed to a $10 million settlement, with the funds going directly to Mr. Trump.
John P. Coale, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, suggested that the companies were motivated to settle because of Mr. Trump’s political resurgence. “If he had not been re-elected, we would have been in court for 1,000 years,” Mr. Coale said. “It was his re-election that made the difference.”
The lawsuits were filed in the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s departure from office, when technology companies coordinated to restrict his access to their platforms.
For many conservatives, those decisions epitomized what they see as Silicon Valley’s unchecked power to censor political speech. By forcing billion-dollar companies into multimillion-dollar settlements, Mr. Trump and his allies argue they have secured a measure of accountability.
The ballroom project and the presidential library stand as physical symbols of that victory, funded not by taxpayers but by what the White House calls “patriot donors” and the settlements Big Tech agreed to pay.
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