Google-owned YouTube agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the service for suspending his account in 2021.
The settlement, filed in a federal court in California on Monday and obtained by TheWrap, will be split in two, with $22 million earmarked for the nonprofit Trust for the National Mall to help build Trump’s Mar-a-Lago-inspired ballroom at the White House. The remaining $2.5 million will go toward the other defendants, including the American Conservative Union, Andrew Baggiani and Naomi Wolf, among other plaintiffs.
The payout marks the last of the three tech companies with pending litigation with Trump in the fallout of the 2020 election, and it is the latest million-dollar deal between a large corporation and a president who has been eager to seek revenge against his enemies.
Meta paid $25 million in January to settle Trump’s lawsuit over his account suspension on the platform, with most of the money meant for Trump’s presidential library. Elon Musk’s X, the platform previously known as Twitter, followed suit in February with a $10 million settlement — with much of it paid to Trump directly. Google executives were eager to pay less than Meta, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Google did not have an immediate comment. A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
Trump has often mocked businesses that chose either to settle or to fight his legal attacks, dismissing their efforts as weak or misguided.
Since Disney paid $16 million in December to settle Trump’s defamation lawsuit, he has thrown a number of jabs at the network and specifically in the face of ABC News correspondent Jon Karl. He also appeared to threaten a lawsuit against Disney for its decision to return “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” to the airwaves.
And as CBS negotiated a settlement with the president earlier this year over a “60 Minutes” episode, he repeatedly criticized the network and the show for its content. He has also taken aim at lawsuit targets the New York Times and Dow Jones, the parent company of the Wall Street Journal, though both papers vowed to fight the cases. (The Times suit was thrown out earlier this month, while Dow Jones sought to get the case dismissed.)
