The platform, owned by Alphabet’s Google, has agreed to a $24.5 million settlement over Trump’s 2021 lawsuit, ending a long-running legal tantrum over his social media exile. Of that $22 million will be funnelled into a Trump-inspired ballroom project at the White House, according to court documents. The rest will be split among fellow plaintiffs, including the American Conservative Union's Naomi Wolf. Lawyer fees weren’t mentioned.
Meta handed over $25 million in January, mostly for Trump’s presidential library fund, and X shelled out $10 million, much of it landing directly in Trump’s pockets. Google’s execs, according to insiders, were desperate not to look like they paid more than Meta.
Trump has managed to extract more than $80 million from various Big Tech and media outfits since returning to the White House last autumn. Paramount Global added to the haul in July with a $16 million "settlement" over a “60 Minutes” segment involving Kamala Harris.
John P. Coale, Trump’s long-time lawyer and now his “special envoy” to Ukraine and Belarus, claimed Trump’s re-election was what finally pushed everyone to the negotiating table. “If he had not been re-elected, we would have been in court for 1,000 years,” said Coale.
According to the Wall Street Journal, when Google boss Sundar Pichai and co-founder Sergey Brin showed up at Mar-a-Lago for a May mediation, Trump insisted on relocating the whole thing to his golf club nearby, where he was due for a round with Nick Saban. Talks started somewhere between the golf carts and the clubhouse lunch.
Legal scholars were not bowled over by Trump’s claims. University of Maryland law professor Mark Graber noted that under current Supreme Court doctrine, “private companies need not give anyone a right of access.”
Still, he reckons the settlements were good business. “If you’re Meta or Google, $25 million is lunch money. It is probably worth $25 million in lunch money to make this go away.”
YouTube initially kicked Trump off in January 2021 for videos that allegedly incited violence, only restoring his account in March 2023. A judge threw out Trump’s suit against X in 2022, and his cases against Meta and YouTube were put on ice the following year. Trump’s lawyers tried to reopen the YouTube case earlier this year, but both sides filed to dismiss it on Monday.