YouTube to pay Trump $22M over Jan. 6 expulsion

What happened

YouTube Monday agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a four-year-old lawsuit from President Donald Trump and other plaintiffs who claimed the Google-owned company censored them by suspending their accounts after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Trump’s share, $22 million, will go toward funding the ballroom he is building at the White House, according to court documents.

Who said what

Since his election last November, Trump has “raked in more than $80 million in settlements” from tech and media companies, The Wall Street Journal said. YouTube is the “final Big Tech company to settle” his censorship claims, following Meta’s $25 million agreement in January and Twitter/X’s $10 million payout in February. When the lawsuits were filed, “legal experts predicted Trump had little chance of prevailing,” The Associated Press said.

Until recently, the suits “had largely stalled,” The New York Times said. “A federal judge dismissed the case against Twitter in 2022, and judges had put the lawsuits against Meta and YouTube on ice.” If Trump “had not been re-elected, we would have been in court for 1,000 years,” said John Coale, one of his lawyers. “It was his re-election that made the difference.”

What next?

“There is a reason to settle, but it has little to do with the law,” which is “very clear that private companies need not give anyone a right of access,” University of Maryland law professor Mark Graber told the Journal. “If you’re Meta or Google,” it’s “probably worth $25 million in lunch money to make this go away” when you have regulatory or legal business with the Trump administration.

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