Mark Zuckerberg is lobbying President Trump and White House officials to agree to a settlement that would prevent Meta Platforms META -0.35%decrease; red down pointing triangle from facing an antitrust trial later this month, according to people familiar with the matter.

Meta and its representatives have met with the president and his senior advisers ahead of an April 14 Federal Trade Commission trial that could force the company to unwind its acquisition of the messaging platform WhatsApp and image-sharing app Instagram. The terms of a potential settlement weren’t immediately clear.

Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, was at the White House on Wednesday, his third visit during Trump’s presidency, the people said. Some of Trump’s aides have grown frustrated at the company’s lobbying strategy, believing it has been too aggressive, some of the people said.

“We regularly meet with policymakers to discuss issues impacting competitiveness, national security and economic growth,” said Andy Stone, a Meta spokesman. 

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, declined to comment. An FTC spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Trump hasn’t yet decided whether the administration will settle with the company over accusations that it bought Instagram and WhatsApp to quash its competition, according to a person with direct knowledge of his thinking. 

The FTC was established by Congress as an independent agency. But Trump has moved to assert White House control over independent agencies, requiring them to submit major regulations to the White House budget office for review.  

“It is unusual for companies involved in big antitrust lawsuits to go to the White House, but it has happened before,” said Jon Leibowitz, a former chairman of the FTC during the Obama administration who also served as a commissioner during the Bush administration. “But, I have never known a White House to pass along that kind of information to the antitrust agency because they know it would be improper, and I have every confidence that if this is going on, the FTC is going to do what it thinks is right.”

The meetings followed an extensive effort by Zuckerberg to make inroads with Trump and improve a relationship that has been rocky for years. Meta donated $1 million last year to Trump’s inaugural fund, and Zuckerberg made two trips to Mar-a-Lago during the transition.

In January, Meta settled a lawsuit Trump had brought against the company years earlier over its decision to suspend his accounts following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Though the lawsuit had languished for years, Meta agreed to pay $25 million, of which $22 million went to a fund for Trump’s presidential library. 

The FTC suit alleges Facebook “is illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct.” The complaint said Facebook put together a deliberate strategy to “eliminate threats to its monopoly.” 

The company has pushed back on the FTC’s charges, saying it competes with several other services including YouTube, X and iMessage, and noting that the FTC cleared the deals more than a decade ago. 

On the final days of her tenure as Federal Trade Commission chair, Lina Khan sits down with WSJ’s Damian Paletta to reflect on her historically aggressive approach to antitrust enforcement and what the future could hold. Photo: Umit Gulsen for WSJ

The FTC and 46 states sued what was then called Facebook in December 2020, in the final weeks of the Trump administration, accusing the social-media giant of buying and freezing out small startups to choke competition. In 2021, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuits, calling the FTC’s suit “legally insufficient,” but gave the agency 30 days to file an amended lawsuit. The FTC followed through, presenting a more detailed case in August 2021 that accused the company of using its power to hobble any rivals it saw as a threat.

The president gets to appoint commissioners to the FTC, but it is traditionally considered an independent agency that operates outside of the president’s direct control. However, Trump has approached these agencies differently, under the theory that the president should have more control over them. In March he fired the two Democratic commissioners, leaving just two other commissioners—both Republicans. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson has been an outspoken critic of Big Tech companies.

Still, the FTC has suggested it would continue pressing on the case.

In an interview with Bloomberg last month, Ferguson said: “We don’t intend to sort of take our foot off the gas” when speaking about the Meta case. “We’re gearing up for trial,” he said. “We’ve got some of the FTC’s best lawyers on it, and we’re getting ready to go. This trial has been five years in the making.”

The FTC case is among several matters that Meta and Zuckerberg have been pushing the White House on in recent weeks. Meta executives have also pressed U.S. trade officials to fight against an expected European Union fine and cease-and-desist order, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. Zuckerberg has urged U.S. officials to fight back against regulations abroad that Meta believes hurts American competitiveness overseas. 

In addition to donating to Trump’s inauguration and settling the 2021 Trump lawsuit, Zuckerberg has also sought to embrace Trump’s priorities in other ways. He scrapped the company’s content-moderation policies, long criticized by Trump, as well as its diversity initiatives, and went on Joe Rogan’s podcast to criticize the Biden administration and complain about what he called the emasculation of society. 

In January, Trump praised Zuckerberg’s shift. “I think they’ve come a long way,” he said at a news conference.

Alvaro Bedoya, one of the democratic commissioners that Trump fired last month, noted at the time that many of the tech CEOs on the dais at Trump’s inauguration are the subject of FTC court orders or investigations. “The President wants the FTC to be a lapdog for his golfing buddies,” Bedoya said in a statement.