YouTube settles Trump’s Jan. 6 lawsuit for $24 million : NPR

The Youtube logo is seen outside the company’s headquarters in San Bruno, California, in April 2025. The company settled a trial against him by President Trump before his re -election.

Josh Edelson / AFP for Getty Images

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Josh Edelson / AFP for Getty Images

YouTube will pay $ 24.5 million to President Trump to resolve a trial in 2021 which said he was a victim of censorship when the site suspended his account following the attack of January 6, 2021 against the American Capitol by Trump supporters, according to federal legal documents deposited on Monday.

The mother company of Youtube Google will devote $ 22 million to the regulation for the construction of a Mar-A-Lago style ballroom of $ 200 million in the White House, according to settlement documents, which indicate that a non-profit organization called Trust for the National Mall is exploited to finance renovations.

This is the last regulation reached by a technological company pursued by Trump following the riots of the Capitol. In January, Meta paid the president for the president for the president on Facebook and Instagram to suspend Trump’s decision after January 6. The X of Elon Musk, formerly Twitter, paid $ 10 million for similar allegations.

Experts in freedom of expression said that the trio of proceedings brought by Trump had not raised credible legal allegations, because the protections of the first amendment generally apply to government officials, and not to private companies, to censor discourse. However, the technological industry has aligned one by one to make public exhibitions of their eight -digit agreements to conclude the dispute.

“This is a direct-pedal influence,” said Eric Goldman, professor of law at the University of Santa Clara and an online speech expert. “These Youtube regulations are not a sign of legal merit.”

The White House and Google did not return any requests for comments.

Payment comes a few days after YouTube said he resettled the accounts that had been permanently prohibited for spreading COVID-19 and lies related to the elections, the last relaxation of disinformation rules on social networks since Trump took office. Some of the accounts that have been launched on YouTube for such violations include those belonging to former advisor Trump Steve Bannon, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who now heads the Ministry of Health and Social Services and the right -wing podcaster Dan Bongino, who is now the deputy director of the FBI.

Puncting tens of millions of dollars to settle the prosecution of Trump alleging censorship is a strike about Face for Silicon Valley, which has defended for years the right to control its own social media platforms.

Legal protections, including a federal law known as article 230, provide technological platforms with a wide latitude to make their own content moderation decisions without being responsible for these actions, as controversial.

The law professor Goldman said that “for” a favorable curry attempt to the president “, there is” absolutely no reason to believe that Trump would have obtained a place with these combinations “.

According to the regulation file, $ 2.5 million will also be given to other complainants, including the American Conservative Union and the author Naomi Wolf, which has been suspended from several social media platforms to share theories not based on Cèvres vaccines.