Mark Zuckerberg has handed $1m (£790,000) to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, just months after the president-elect threatened to imprison him for life.

The billionaire Facebook founder made the donation ahead of a private dinner with Mr Trump at his Mar-A-Lago club last month in a sign of thawing relations between the pair.

Facebook suspended Mr Trump’s account for two years in 2021 in the wake of the Jan 6 riots on Capitol Hill. Mr Trump has repeatedly suggested he could jail the Meta chief executive if his social media empire swung the outcome of the election.

Writing in his book Save America, Mr Trump said: “We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison.”

However, after the Mar-A-Lago meeting, Stephen Miller, an adviser to Mr Trump, said Mr Zuckerberg had been “very clear about his desire to be a supporter of ... this reform movement that Donald Trump is leading”.

Ease tensions

Mr Zuckerberg’s donation, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, suggests an attempt to ease tensions with the incoming regime. Mr Zuckerberg has previously given funds to candidates for the US Senate and Congress, although he declined to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2024 election.

The Facebook founder also gave Mr Trump a pair of Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses at their private meeting and demonstrated the company’s artificial intelligence technology to the president-elect.

Mr Zuckerberg did not donate to either Mr Trump’s 2017 inauguration fund or Joe Biden’s four years later. The donations help pay for the president’s swearing-in ceremony and the surrounding festivities, and are often rewarded with private access to the president and his allies.

Mr Trump’s fund for his inauguration in January 2017 raised $53m from billionaires including Henry Kravis, of the buyout barons KKR, and Howard Lutnick, of Cantor Fitzgerald, who is also Mr Trump’s pick for commerce secretary.

While Mr Zuckerberg green-lit Mr Trump’s suspension from Facebook, he has since raised concerns about censorship of social media and overzealous interventions by Mr Biden’s White House during the Covid pandemic.

He also praised Mr Trump after the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania in July, describing his reaction to the attack as “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life”.

The donation comes after Mr Trump secured a flood of support from Silicon Valley billionaires, with Elon Musk gifting $277m to the president-elect and other Republican candidates.

Mr Musk, who runs Facebook rival X, has emerged as a vocal supporter of Mr Trump and is advising on a vast cost-cutting programme to reduce the size of the federal government.

Sir Nick Clegg, Meta’s head of global affairs and a key lieutenant of Mr Zuckerberg, said last week the billionaire hoped to play an “active role” in the White House’s decisions on technology policy.