The video platform resolved a lawsuit filed in response to Trump’s suspension on January 6, 2021, and riots at the U.S. Capitol.
YouTube agreed to pay $24.5 million to resolve a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021 after the platform halted its accounts in response to a riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Under the settlement, YouTube, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, will donate $22 million on Trump’s behalf to the Trust of National Mall, a nonprofit that oversees a $2 million project to build a ballroom in the White House, court filings were shown Monday.
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The remaining $2.5 million will go to other plaintiffs, including the American Conservative Coalition and American author Naomi Wolf, according to a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
The settlement did not include entry for fraudulent activities by YouTube and, according to the filing, reached “the sole purpose of infringing disputed claims and avoiding the costs of further litigation and the risk of further litigation.”
Payments are relatively small on YouTube, with advertising revenues reaching nearly $9.8 billion in the second quarter of 2025 alone.
The settlement comes after Metaplatform and X agreed to pay millions of dollars earlier this year to resolve Trump’s claims that they were unfairly censored following the January 6 attacks made by Trump supporters motivated by false claims that the 2020 election was “stolen.”
John P. Kore, Trump’s ally and lawyer who filed three lawsuits, said he was pleased with the outcome.
“That’s very true,” Kore told Al Jazeera. “So are the president and other plaintiffs.”
Kore said three cases totaled $60 million.
“I believe we changed our behavior,” he said.
Big Tech has been moving towards Curry’s favor in his administration since returning to the White House after Trump took the platform out of fear that his false claims about the 2020 presidential election were promoting violence.
Earlier this month, high-tech CEOs, including Google’s Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Apple’s Tim Cook, lavished Trump at a White House dinner event and expressed support for his administration’s initiative on artificial intelligence.
Media companies are also paying large sums to settle Trump’s legal claims.
Paramount Global said it agreed to pay $16 million to resolve Trump’s claim that CBS News’ 60-minute program miscompiled an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.
In December, ABC News agreed to donate $15 million to Trump’s library to settle allegations that he was slandered by his anchor George Stephanopuuros.
Timothy Koski, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sydney’s School of Media and Communications, said the YouTube settlement took a blow to expect a consistent approach to content moderation through social media platforms.
“Unfortunately, due to the erosion of rules-based orders, we cannot expect consistent treatment from anyone seeking to benefit from this administration,” Kosky told Al Jazeera.
“It really empowers the very large companies we work on everyday life, not just the platform, but also the selective veins, especially rather than removing censorship.”
“In addition, the United States has historically set precedents for many governments around the world,” he added.
