BREAKING: YouTube agrees to pay $24.5 MILLION to settle Trump account suspension lawsuit

YouTube has agreed to reach a settlement that will see the tech company pay $24.5 million over the suspension of President Donald Trump’s YouTube account. Trump brought a lawsuit against the company and its CEO in 2021 after Trump was suspended from the platform in the wake of January 6.

The filing stated that YouTube parent company Alphabet will pay $22 million to “settle and resolve with Plaintiff Donald J. Trump any and all disputes and claims arising out of or relating to the Action, which he has directed to be contributed, on his behalf, to the Trust for the National Mall, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt entity dedicated to restoring, preserving, and elevating the National Mall, to support the construction of the White House State Ballroom,” per Variety. 

$2.5 million will be paid to additional plaintiffs in the case: American Conservative Union, Andrew Baggiani, Austen Fletcher, Maryse Veronica Jean-Louis, Frank Valentine, Kelly Victory and Naomi Wolf. This money will go to settle “any and all disputes and claims arising out of or relating to the Action, to be distributed among them in accordance with the terms of the Settlement Agreements executed between Defendants and those Plaintiffs.”

This is the third social media platform to settle with Trump over account suspensions. In January 2025, Meta agreed to pay $25 million over his suspension on Facebook and Instagram. In February 2025, X, which was known as Twitter at the time of the suspension, settled for $10 million.

The settlement from YouTube comes as the platform has said it will allow some accounts that had been banned for content related to Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 election that violated platform rules to return. A letter to House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan stated, “Reflecting the Company’s commitment to free expression, YouTube will provide an opportunity for all creators to rejin the platform if the Company terminated their channels for repeated violations of Covid-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect.”