Meta Platforms Inc. agreed to pay $25 million to resolve Donald Trump’s claims that his ban from the company’s social media networks after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol was illegal censorship, a lawyer for the president said.
Meta will contribute $22 million to the presidential library and the remainder to other users of Meta’s Facebook who also sued over being banned, lawyer John Coale said in a phone interview. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed details of the agreement and declined further comment.
The settlement comes as the once-chilly relationship between Trump and Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has warmed up. Zuckerberg recently loosened content restrictions on the company’s platforms that conservatives have complained about for years, and he attended the president’s inauguration.
When Trump first sued Facebook over the ban — and separately sued Twitter Inc. and Google’s YouTube over the bans they imposed following the Jan. 6 attack — he sought monetary damages to punish the companies and ensure other users can’t be banned or flagged by the tech giants.
All three companies eventually dropped the bans, but by then Trump had largely shifted his social media commentary to his own network, Truth Social.
“I’m glad it’s over with,” Coale said. “Meta should have paid this kind of money because they did some pretty bad things back in 2021.”
Coale said Zuckerberg personally reached the settlement with Trump while recently visiting the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
There’s no admission of wrongdoing by Meta in the accord, Coale said.
“They’ve taken responsibility and hopefully everybody’s happy now,” he said.
The settlement was reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal.
