Elon Musk’s social media platform X has agreed to pay about $10 million to settle a lawsuit that US President Donald Trump brought against the company and its former chief executive, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
That makes X the second social media platform to settle with Trump over the suspension of his accounts following the storming of the US Capitol by his supporters in January 2021.
Last month, Meta Platforms said it had agreed to pay about $25 million to settle a lawsuit by Trump. Trump filed lawsuits against Twitter, now known as X, Facebook and Alphabet as well as their chief executives at the time in July 2021, alleging unlawful silencing of conservative viewpoints.
Trump’s team mulled letting the lawsuit with X phase out, considering the president’s close relationship with Musk, who had contributed $250 million to Trump’s election campaign, the WSJ reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
But they ultimately moved forward with the settlement, the WSJ reported.
Musk, who heads Tesla also leads the Department of Government Efficiency, a new arm of the White House tasked with radically shrinking the federal bureaucracy.
Trump’s attorneys are also expected to pursue a settlement with Google, which banned Trump from YouTube after the 2021 US Capitol riot, WSJ said.
X and its CEO at the time of Trump’s suspension, Jack Dorsey, as well as Alphabet and the White House did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
