Meta agrees to pay $25 million to settle Trump lawsuit over suspended accounts

Meta said Wednesday it would pay $25 million to settle a four-year-old lawsuit from President Donald Trump over the social media company’s decision to suspend Trump’s accounts after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. 

Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, filed a notice of the settlement in federal court in San Francisco, where the lawsuit was pending. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone separately confirmed the terms: a $25 million payment from the company, with $22 million going toward a fund for Trump’s presidential library and the balance dedicated to legal fees and other plaintiffs in the case. 

The settlement does not require Meta to admit wrongdoing, Stone said. 

The White House declined to comment on the settlement. 

The settlement was earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal. 

Meta is at least the second major corporation to pay to settle a Trump lawsuit since he won a second term in the November election. In December, ABC said it would pay $15 million to close out a dispute in which Trump alleged that anchor George Stephanopoulos had defamed him. 

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has worked aggressively to court Trump since the election. He had a prime seat for Trump’s swearing-in this month and hours later hosted a party in Trump’s honor. Meta has overhauled its content moderation policies to more closely align with the Trump administration, including allowing insults against transgender people and ending its independent fact-checking program in the United States. Zuckerberg also promoted a longtime Republican, Joel Kaplan, to be the company's chief of global policy.

Trump has previously been critical of Zuckerberg and Meta. In late August, Trump published a book of photographs in which he said Zuckerberg “will spend the rest of his life in prison” if he did “anything illegal” to influence the presidential election. At the time, Meta declined to comment on the statement.

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After Trump won the Nov. 5 election, Zuckerberg wished Trump well and donated to his inaugural fund.

Meta, along with nearly every other major tech company, suspended Trump’s social media accounts after the Capitol riot by Trump’s supporters, limiting Trump’s presence online for the final two weeks of his first term. 

Zuckerberg said in a Jan. 7, 2021, post on Facebook that Trump’s refusal to condemn his supporters who stormed and occupied the Capitol showed that he “intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.”

Trump’s accounts remained locked on Facebook and Instagram until February 2023.