Meta to pay $25 million to settle Trump’s 2021 lawsuit over suspended accounts

(Reuters) – Meta Platforms (META.O), on Wednesday said it has agreed to pay about $25 million to settle a lawsuit by President Donald Trump over the company’s suspension of his accounts after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol.

Trump filed lawsuits against Twitter Inc, now known as X, Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google, as well as their chief executives in July 2021, alleging they unlawfully silence conservative viewpoints.

Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts were suspended after his supporters launched an assault on the U.S. Capitol following a speech by him repeating false claims that his election defeat was the result of widespread fraud.

Out of the settlement amount, $22 million will go towards a fund for Trump’s presidential library, and the rest to legal fees and other plaintiffs in the case.

Facebook parent Meta filed a notice regarding the settlement in a federal court in San Francisco.

Discussions about the lawsuit, which had not gotten very far since the fall of 2023, started again after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago club for a dinner with him in November, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news.

The Zuckerberg-led social media giant has been attempting to mend relations with a leader who has railed against its political content policies and threatened its CEO with imprisonment.

In a departure from its past practice, Meta in December announced a $1 million contribution to Trump’s inaugural fund.

Meta ended its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in January, and also scrapped its U.S. fact-checking program and reduced curbs on discussions around contentious topics such as immigration and gender identity.

It named prominent Republican Joel Kaplan as its chief global affairs officer and elected Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and close friend of Trump, to its board.