Dec. 15 (UPI) — ABC News will pay $15 million in President-elect Donald Trump in a defamation suit against the network and anchor George Stephanopoulos.
According to the settlement, ABC News will pay $15 million as a charitable contribution to a “Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for Plaintiff, as Presidents of the United States of America have established in the past.” The network also will pay $1 million in Trump’s attorney fees.
Stephanopoulos and ABC News also posted the following as an editor’s note at the bottom of a March 10, 2024, online article: “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.”
ABC News spokesperson told CNN and Fox News Digital: “We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing.”
Former U.S. President Donald Trump debates U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential debate on ABC on September 10, 2024, in Philadelphia. File pool Photo by Win McNamee/UPI
In the lawsuit filed against ABC News, Trump claimed that Stephanopoulos’ statements were “false, intentional, malicious and designed to cause harm.”
During an interview with the South Carolina House member, the anchor said 10 times Trump was found “liable for rape” although a jury actually determined Trump was liable for “sexual abuse,” which is different under New York law.
After playing a clip of Mace discussing being a victim of rape, Stephanopoulos asked her, “How do you square your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony we just saw?”
“You’ve endorsed Donald Trump for president. Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape,” Stephanopoulos said.
Carroll alleged that Trump raped her in a department store in the mid-1990s. Trump has denied all wrongdoing toward Carroll.
In 2023, a jury awarded Carroll $5 million for battery and defamation. In January, Carroll was awarded an additional $83.3 million in damages for defamatory statements made by Trump that disparaged her and denied her rape allegations.
After the federal jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse, Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in a later ruling that just because Carroll failed to prove rape “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.'”
U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisette M. Reid on Friday ordered Trump and Stephanopoulos to sit for depositions next week ahead of the Dec. 24 deadline for the defendants to file a motion for summary judgment to avoid a trial.
But it wasn’t necessary because of the settlement, which was filed in the Southern District of Florida.
Trump has sued CBS, demanding $10 billion in damages over the network’s 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. His legal counsel claimed the interview with Harris and the associated programming were “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” intended to “mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales” of the presidential election in her favor.
