Meta has announced it will be settling a four-year-long lawsuit from President Donald Trump that was filed against the company and its owner and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, after Trump’s accounts were removed from Meta’s Facebook in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riots in 2021.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Meta, which also owns and operates Instagram, filed a notice of the settlement in federal court in San Francisco where the lawsuit was pending. It was confirmed that the company will pay roughly $25 million, with roughly $3 million going towards legal fees, while the remaining $22 million will be going into a fund for Trump’s presidential library.
Politico reported that Trump’s lawyer, John Coale, had said the deal was made directly between both Trump and Zuckerberg.
“There were talks between the two of them, Zuckerberg and Trump, with me and other lawyers in the room, of course,” Coale said, “I’ve been working to get people to the table for two years now. Of course, the election helped.”
Politico further reported the settlement is the latest in a string of legal disputes currently being resolved between tech giants, legacy media, and Trump after he won the election.
ABC News reportedly settled a libel suit in December, that was lodged by Trump after anchor George Stephanopoulos repeatedly said on air that a jury had found Trump liable for a rape case – the news outlet agreed to pay $15 million to Trump to resolve the case.
In early January, Zuckerberg announced Meta would be removing its third-party fact-checking from its platforms and apologized for succumbing to pressure from the Obama administration to remove misinformation and implement the fact-checking policies on its platform.
Zuckerberg was also given a top seat during Trump’s inauguration ceremony this month, where he joined other tech and business billionaires like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Tesla CEO and X CEO Elon Musk.
