Alphabet, the parent company of YouTube, has agreed to pay $22 million to President Donald Trump to settle a 2021 lawsuit that he filed over YouTube’s suspension of his account in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The terms of the settlement were disclosed in a court filing Monday.
The $22 million will “settle and resolve with Plaintiff Donald J. Trump any and all disputes and claims arising out of or relating to the Action, which he has directed to be contributed, on his behalf, to the Trust for the National Mall, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt entity dedicated to restoring, preserving, and elevating the National Mall, to support the construction of the White House State Ballroom,” the filing says.
Alphabet also will pay $2.5 million to settle and resolve with other plaintiffs — the American Conservative Union, Andrew Baggiani, Austen Fletcher, Maryse Veronica Jean-Louis, Frank Valentine, Kelly Victory and Naomi Wolf — “any and all disputes and claims arising out of or relating to the Action, to be distributed among them in accordance with the terms of the Settlement Agreements executed between Defendants and those Plaintiffs,” per the filing.
In July 2021, Trump sued Meta (then called Facebook), Twitter and Google over the internet companies’ moves to suspend his accounts on their platforms. Trump alleged the actions were “unconstitutional” and violated his First Amendment rights, but that is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the U.S. Constitution actually says. The First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting free speech and does not apply to private companies.
In January 2025, just before Trump took office for his second presidential term, Meta agreed to pay $25 million to settle Trump‘s lawsuit alleging censorship over the social media giant’s suspension of his Facebook and Instagram accounts after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.
From Variety US
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