YouTube has reached a $24.5 million settlement with former President Donald Trump and other individuals whose accounts were suspended following the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. The agreement, detailed in a legal document filed on Monday, marks another resolution in Trump’s legal challenges against tech giants.
The video streaming platform initially froze Trump’s account after the riot, citing concerns that his content could incite further violence. In October 2021, Trump initiated a lawsuit against YouTube, along with other social media companies that had removed his accounts, alleging wrongful censorship.
A substantial portion of the settlement, $22 million, is designated for Mr. Trump. According to court filings in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, he plans to donate this sum to the Trust for the National Mall and allocate funds for the construction of a new ballroom at the White House.
The remaining $2.5 million of the settlement will be distributed among other plaintiffs involved in the case, including prominent writer Naomi Wolf and the American Conservative Union.
John Coale, a lawyer representing Mr. Trump, commented on the outcome: “If he hadn’t been re-elected, we’d be in court forever. Then the president gets re-elected and things look a lot better.”
A spokesperson for YouTube chose not to comment on the settlement. The details of this agreement were first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
This settlement is the latest in a series of efforts by major technology and media corporations to conclude costly legal disputes with Mr. Trump, who has frequently accused social media platforms of censorship and media companies of defamation.
Earlier this year, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, settled a similar lawsuit with Trump, agreeing to pay $25 million in January. In February, X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter and now owned by Elon Musk, reached a settlement of approximately $10 million to resolve a dispute stemming from Trump’s account suspension in 2021.
Traditional media companies have also made concessions. Paramount settled a lawsuit with Trump in July, paying $16 million over the editing of a CBS ’60 Minutes’ interview involving former Vice President Kamala Harris. In December, ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to settle a defamation case brought by Trump against the network and anchor George Stephanopoulos.
For a period, the lawsuits against these social media companies had largely stalled, with a federal judge dismissing the case against Twitter in 2022 and other judges putting the Meta and YouTube cases on hold.
Following these developments, X reinstated Trump’s account shortly after Elon Musk acquired the company in 2022, while both YouTube and Meta restored his accounts in 2023.
Just last week, YouTube announced its decision to reinstate content creators who had been banned for violating its misinformation policies concerning Covid-19 and the 2020 election. This move, which also includes relaxing some content moderation policies, comes amidst a Republican lawmaker investigation into whether social media companies restricted speech under pressure from the Biden administration.
Mr. Coale confirmed that while these policy shifts were part of discussions during the settlement talks with YouTube, they were not a mandatory condition for the agreement.
Reflecting on the broader context, Mr. Coale stated, “It’s better than it was back then. There’s no government now pushing them to do anything, and I think that will stay in the future, no matter who wins the White House.”