Alphabet has agreed to pay U.S. President Donald Trump $22 million to settle a class action lawsuit over YouTube account suspensions following the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. The settlement also covers other plaintiffs whose YouTube channels were permanently banned in the aftermath of the Capitol riot. Those individuals will collectively receive an additional $2.5 million, to be split among them.
Trump originally filed the lawsuit in 2021, alongside similar suits against Twitter (now rebranded as X under Elon Musk) and Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram. The central claim across all cases was that the platforms’ suspension of his accounts violated his First Amendment rights.
- Twitter/X settlement: Musk’s platform agreed to pay Trump $10 million last year.
- Meta settlement: Earlier in 2025, Meta resolved its case with a $25 million payment to the former president.
The Alphabet agreement adds another multimillion-dollar payout to Trump’s ongoing legal victories over what he has described as politically motivated deplatforming.
The settlement comes at a sensitive moment for Alphabet. Just weeks earlier, the company submitted a letter to the House Judiciary Committee criticizing what it described as undue government pressure to censor or moderate user content across its platforms. Alphabet has also announced that YouTube will begin offering pathways for reinstatement to accounts banned for spreading content about COVID-19 or election integrity that was previously deemed misinformation.
As with Trump’s earlier settlements, the funds from Alphabet are not going directly into his personal accounts. Instead, the $22 million payment will be routed to the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit that partners with the National Park Service. The money has been earmarked for the construction of a ballroom project Trump is funding at the White House.
The Meta payout earlier this year was allocated toward the same initiative. Alphabet’s settlement follows another legal victory for Trump this summer, when Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, settled a lawsuit brought by the former president. Trump alleged that the network had deliberately edited an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris in a way intended to “confuse, deceive, and mislead the public.”
Paramount paid $16 million to end that dispute. Just three weeks later, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the $8 billion acquisition of Paramount by Skydance Media, a move that raised questions in Washington about timing and influence.
