By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, May 8 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is nearing a $400 million settlement with TikTok to resolve an ongoing lawsuit over alleged child-privacy violations, ABC News reported on Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter.
The White House declined to comment, referring questions to the Justice Department, which did not immediately comment. TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.
ABC said the settlement monies would be used to fund Trump’s “beautification” projects in Washington, sources familiar with the discussions told ABC News. Trump has asked for $10 billion from Congress to fund a wide range of projects in the District of Columbia area.
ABC reported that White House officials have held talks for weeks about whether they could legally use the money to pay for Trump’s proposed 250-foot (76 m) triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery. Typically, settlements are used to aid victims.
The Justice Department in 2024 sued TikTok and parent company ByteDance for failing to protect children’s privacy on the social media app.
The U.S. alleges that for years, millions of American children under age 13 have been using TikTok and that the site “has been collecting and retaining children’s personal information.”
The government said TikTok violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires services aimed at children to obtain parental consent to collect personal information from users under age 13.
The lawsuit, which was joined by the Federal Trade Commission, said it was aimed at putting an end “to TikTok’s unlawful massive-scale invasions of children’s privacy.”
The DOJ said TikTok knowingly permitted children to create regular TikTok accounts, and then create and share short-form videos and messages with adults and others on the regular TikTok platform. TikTok collected personal information from these children without obtaining consent from their parents.
TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, in January finalized a deal to establish a majority American-owned joint venture to secure U.S. data and avoid a U.S. ban on the short-video app used by over 200 million Americans.
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Diti Pujara and Matthew Lewis)
