ABC agrees to pay Trump $15 million in defamation settlement – JURIST
On Friday, American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. (“ABC”) agreed to pay $15 million to a Presidential foundation for US President-elect Donald Trump as a settlement for Trump’s defamation lawsuit.
ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos interviewed Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC 1st District) on March 10, 2024, after she endorsed Trump for the Presidency. Stephanopoulos questioned how Mace as a rape victim could endorse Trump when a US court of law found him liable for the rape of writer E. Jean Carroll.
Trump sued ABC, ABC News, Inc., and Stephanopoulos for defamation based on Stephanopoulos’s assertions of Trump being found liable for rape. Trump argued that the US District Court for the Southern District of New York instead found him liable for sexual abuse, which rape was distinguished from by the element of sexual intercourse under then New York Penal Law. Stephanopoulos argued that Florida’s common law protections of court proceeding reports and the US Constitution’s First Amendment protections applied to his statements. Furthermore, he claimed that the case’s presiding Judge Lewis A. Kaplan stated that Carroll was raped.
Judge Kaplan specifically wrote in a memorandum opinion for his ruling over a motion:
The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed … the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.
On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Stephanopoulos firmly expressed that Trump’s lawsuit will not intimidate him from performing his job as a news anchor.
The settlement further requires ABC to pay $1 million for Trump’s attorney fees and to put an apologetic editor’s note in the interview’s publishing article for the statements at issue being made.
