Google’s YouTube has agreed to pay $24.5 million US to settle a lawsuit brought by U.S. President Donald Trump after the video platform suspended his account following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The settlement of the case, which had been ongoing for more than four years, earmarks $22 million for Trump to contribute to the Trust for the National Mall and to the construction of a White House ballroom, according to court documents filed Monday. The rest will go to other plaintiffs, including the American Conservative Union.
Google is the latest big tech company to settle lawsuits brought by Trump. In January, Meta agreed to pay $25 million US to settle a lawsuit over his 2021 suspension from Facebook. Elon Musk’s X agreed to settle a similar lawsuit brought against the company — then known as Twitter — for $10 million US.
When the lawsuits against Meta, Twitter and YouTube were filed, legal experts predicted Trump had little chance of prevailing.
The YouTube settlement does not constitute an admission of liability, the filing says. Google confirmed the settlement but declined to comment beyond it.
Trump’s YouTube account has been restored since 2023. The settlement will barely dent Google’s parent company, Alphabet, which has a market value of nearly $3 trillion US — an increase of about $600 billion, or 25 per cent, 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, Calif.
