ABC to Pay $15 Million to Settle a Defamation Suit Brought by Trump

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/14/us/politics/trump-abc-settlement.html

ABC News agreed on Saturday to give $15 million to President-elect Donald 
J. Trump’s future presidential foundation and museum to settle a 
defamation lawsuit filed by Mr. Trump this spring concerning on-air 
statements made by the network’s star anchor George Stephanopoulos.

Under the terms of a settlement agreement filed in Federal District Court 
in Miami, ABC News and Mr. Stephanopoulos said they would soon publish a 
statement saying they “regret” the remarks that the anchor made about Mr. 
Trump during a televised interview in March.

ABC News, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, will pay Mr. Trump an 
additional $1 million for his legal fees.

The outcome of the lawsuit marks an unusual victory for Mr. Trump in his 
ongoing legal campaign against national news organizations. Several of his 
previous attempts to sue media outlets for defamation, including lawsuits 
against CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post, ended in defeat.

“We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the 
lawsuit on the terms in the court filing,” a spokeswoman for ABC News said 
on Saturday.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers and a spokesman for his transition did not immediately 
respond to an email seeking comment.

During the interview that prompted the lawsuit, Mr. Stephanopoulos asked 
Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, who has spoken 
publicly about being raped as a teenager, why she had continued to support 
Mr. Trump after he was found liable for rape in a civil case in Manhattan 
last year.

In that case, a federal jury found Mr. Trump liable for sexually abusing 
and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, but it did not find him liable 
for rape. Still, the judge who oversaw the proceeding later clarified that 
because of New York’s narrow legal definition of rape, the jury’s verdict 
did not mean that Ms. Carroll had “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ 
her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”

Mr. Trump ultimately sued ABC, accusing Mr. Stephanopoulos of harming his 
reputation by saying multiple times on-air that he had been found liable 
for raping Ms. Carroll.

The settlement announced on Saturday required ABC to place an editor’s 
note at the bottom of an online article about the interview with Ms. Mace. 
The note was to read: “ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret 
statements regarding President Donald J. Trump made during an interview by 
George Stephanopoulos with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 
2024.”

The agreement was made public one day after a federal magistrate judge 
working on the defamation case ordered Mr. Trump to sit for a deposition 
next week in Florida. Mr. Stephanopoulos was also scheduled to sit for a 
deposition next week.

Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing 
on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and 
against former President Donald J. Trump.  More about Alan Feuer

Michael M. Grynbaum writes about the intersection of media, politics and 
culture. He has been a media correspondent at The Times since 2016. More 
about Michael M. Grynbaum

-- 
November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump.  We look 
forward to America being great again.

The disease known as Kamala Harris has been effectively treated and 
eradicated.

We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that 
stupid people won't be offended.

Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem.  It has none.

Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden 
fiasco, President Trump.  

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the 
The World According To Garp.  Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood 
queer liberal democrat donors.