{"id":33670,"date":"2025-09-30T03:11:33","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T03:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/youtube-to-pay-22-million-to-trump-to-settle-post-january-6-ban-case\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T03:11:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T03:11:33","slug":"youtube-to-pay-22-million-to-trump-to-settle-post-january-6-ban-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/youtube-to-pay-22-million-to-trump-to-settle-post-january-6-ban-case\/","title":{"rendered":"YouTube to pay $22 million to Trump to settle post-January 6 ban case"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/68d2a18c183847aa39d74781?format=jpeg\" alt=\"President Donald Trump\"\/><figcaption>President Donald Trump<\/p>\n<p>Bloomberg\/Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Donald Trump and Alphabet reached an agreement in his lawsuit against YouTube.<\/li>\n<li>Alphabet, which owns YouTube, will pay a total of $24.5 million to settle the post-January 6-related case.<\/li>\n<li>Trump has directed that part of his money will finance the construction of the White House ballroom.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Alphabet is the final major tech company to pay President Donald Trump after it barred him from a social media platform following the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, Alphabet, which owns YouTube, announced that it would pay $24.5 million to settle a case brought by Trump following his post-riot ban. Of that amount, $22 million will go to Trump.<\/p>\n<p>The remaining $2.5 million will go to co-plaintiffs, including the American Conservative Union, Andrew Baggiani, Austen Fletcher, Maryse Veronica Jean-Louis, Frank Valentine, Kelly Victory, and Naomi Wolf.<\/p>\n<p>Six days after the Capitol riot, YouTube announced that it would suspend Trump&#039;s account &quot;for a minimum of one week &quot;due to concerns about the ongoing potential for violence.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We will turn the account back on,&quot; then-YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said in March 2021. &quot;But it will be when we see the reduced law enforcement in capitals in the US, if we don&#039;t see different warnings coming out of government agencies, those would all be signals to us that it would be safe to turn the channel back on.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>In July 2021, Trump sued three major platforms \u2014 Twitter (now X), Alphabet&#039;s YouTube, and Meta, along with their CEOs \u2014 in Florida, accusing them of violating his free speech. The case was later moved to California, where Alphabet is headquartered.<\/p>\n<p>The restrictions on Trump&#039;s account were not lifted until March 2023, after both X and Meta had already reinstated Trump on their platforms.<\/p>\n<p>According to court filings, Trump decided that the $22 million would go to the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, and toward the construction of an expansive ballroom on the White House grounds.<\/p>\n<p>John Kelly, Trump&#039;s attorney on the case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment left after business hours Monday.<\/p>\n<p>The news, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, brings to a close settlement talks that had dragged on for months.<\/p>\n<p>Trump previously reached agreements with X, formerly Twitter, and Meta to settle their separate cases. In January, Meta agreed to pay Trump $25 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit over suspending him on Facebook and Instagram. The Elon Musk-owned X also paid $10 million in settlement to Trump for a suit of a similar nature in February. All told, Trump has raked in more than $57 million in settlement money related to his post-January 6 bans from leading social media platforms.<\/p>\n<p>Separate from account suspensions, Trump also received a $16 million settlement from Disney in 2024 for a defamation lawsuit, and another $16 million from Paramount in July for a legal dispute over an interview it broadcast on CBS with former Vice President Kamala Harris. The latter settlement did not come with a statement of apology.<\/p>\n<p>Alphabet did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Per the terms of the settlement, the company admitted no liability or fault on its part.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Donald Trump Bloomberg\/Bloomberg via Getty Images Donald Trump and Alphabet reached an agreement in his lawsuit against YouTube. Alphabet, which owns YouTube, will pay a total of $24.5 million to settle the post-January 6-related case. Trump has directed that part of his money will finance the construction of the White House ballroom. Alphabet is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-33670","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}