YouTube has agreed to pay $24.5m (£18.1m) to settle a lawsuit introduced by Donald Trump after it banned his account following the January 6 Capitol riot.
The US president was suspended from the Google-owned platform over his function within the rebellion, which saw his supporters attempt to stop Joe Biden’s 2020 election win from being ratified.
Greater than 4 years on from the violent scenes that left a police officer dead, court docket paperwork filed on Monday revealed that $22m (£16.3m) from the settlement will go in direction of a belief for Washington DC’s Nationwide Mall and the development of a White Home ballroom.
The rest will likely be paid to different events concerned within the case, together with the American Conservative Union.
Capitol rioter: ‘I used to be convicted in a present trial’
Google declined to touch upon the explanations for the settlement, which doesn’t represent an admission of legal responsibility.
Mr Trump’s YouTube account has been again on-line since 2023.
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Google’s father or mother firm Alphabet is the third tech agency to settle with Mr Trump over what he perceived as an illegitimate muzzling of him on-line following the riot.
He was additionally suspended from Meta’s platforms and Twitter, strikes which noticed him gravitate in direction of his personal social media platform – Reality Social.
The president and his supporters have falsely maintained that the 2020 election was stolen.
Trump: ‘Most Capitol rioters have been harmless’
Meta – which owns Fb and Instagram – agreed to pay $25m (£18.6m) to settle Mr Trump’s lawsuit, and X (what Twitter grew to become after being purchased by Elon Musk in 2022) settled for $10m (£7.4m).
Alphabet boss Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Mr Musk all attended Mr Trump’s inauguration this 12 months, with the latter having been a key contributor to his 2024 election marketing campaign.
He led the Trump administration’s cost-cutting DOGE unit through the early months of 2025.
