Meta will pay Donald Trump roughly $25 million as part of a settlement agreement resolving a 2021 lawsuit brought after the company suspended the president’s Facebook accounts.
Trump filed the suit after his accounts were taken offline in the wake of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Sources familiar with the agreement told
The president signed the settlement agreement Wednesday, sources said. Meta later confirmed the reports to The Independent.
The settlement comes just over a week after Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg was seen alongside fellow billionaires and tech bros at Trump’s inauguration.
In recent months the pair have apparently mended their previously frosty relationship, with Zuckerberg visiting the president for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida shortly after the election as part of several efforts to soften relations between Meta and the incoming administration.
Meta also donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
The sources told the WSJ that the president had raised the matter of the lawsuit with Zuckerberg at the end of their dinner in November and implied that it had to be resolved before he could be “brought into the tent.”
Zuckerberg returned to Florida in early January for a day of mediation, during which time Trump reportedly stepped out briefly to face sentencing in his high-profile hush money trial.
Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts were suspended in 2021 because of posts he made linked to January 6 when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a bid to upend Joe Biden’s presidential victory.
In the days leading up to the violent insurrection, Trump repeatedly used his platforms to make false claims that he won the 2020 election and allege widespread election fraud, which was later found to be false. He urged his followers near the Capitol the day his supporters stormed the building to “fight like hell.”
The subsequent lawsuit against Meta was one of a series of legal actions that Trump brought in July 2021, months after leaving office. He also sued Twitter, now X and owned by Elon Musk, and YouTube.
“Censorship runs rampant,” the 2021 complaint against Meta read, “and the result is a chilling effect cast over our nation’s pressing political, medical, social, and cultural discussions.”
Trump sought an injunction ordering Facebook to reinstate their accounts, as well as removing all warning labels from their content.