ABC News settles defamation suit with Trump for $15 million
CNN
By Paula Reid and Katelyn Polantz, CNN
(CNN) — ABC News and George Stephanopoulos have reached a settlement with Donald Trump in his defamation suit. The network will pay $15 million to a charity and will issue an apology.
The settlement was filed publicly Saturday and reveals ABC will pay $15 million as a charitable contribution to a “presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for the Plaintiff.”
The network will also pay $1 million in Trump’s attorneys’ fees.
Trump filed the lawsuit in Florida federal court earlier this year, arguing that Stephanopoulos and ABC News defamed him when the anchor said 10 times during a contentious on-air interview with South Carolina GOP Rep. Nancy Mace in March that a jury found Trump had “raped” E. Jean Carroll.
Carroll alleged that Trump raped her in a department store in the mid-1990s and that he defamed her when he denied her claim. Trump has denied all wrongdoing toward Carroll.
In 2023, a jury found that Trump sexually abused her, sufficient to hold him liable for battery, though it did not find that Carroll proved he raped her. The jury awarded Carroll $5 million for battery and defamation. In January, Carroll was awarded an additional $83.3 million in damages for his defamatory statements disparaging her and denying her rape allegations.
The jury did not find that Carroll proved Trump had raped her. Instead, a judge concluded months later when dismissing Trump’s countersuit against Carroll that the claim Trump raped Carroll was “substantially true.” The judge wrote in August 2023 that Trump “raped” her in the broader sense of that word, as people generally understand it, though not as it is narrowly defined by New York state law.
In the lawsuit filed against ABC News in March, Trump claimed that Stephanopoulos’ statements were “false, intentional, malicious and designed to cause harm.”
The case was allowed to move forward in July, with the judge refusing to dismiss the lawsuit, writing that these definitions were different enough. He added that the case would turn on “whether it is substantially true to say a jury (or juries) found (Trump) liable for rape by a jury despite the jury’s verdict expressly finding he was not liable for rape.”
This story is breaking and will be updated.
The-CNN-Wire
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