by Daniel Johnson
December 15, 2024
The settlement stemmed from comments made by George Stephanopoulos about Trump.
ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by President-elect Donald Trump’s presidential library on Dec. 14. The settlement stemmed from comments George Stephanopoulos made on a March 10 episode of “This Week” that Trump had been found civilly liable of the rape of writer E. Jean Carroll. Instead, Trump was found civilly liable for sexual abuse and defamation, not rape.
According to The Associated Press, the settlement also required ABC News to post an editor’s note expressing the network’s regret over the statements of Stephanopoulos during the episode in question.
The $15 million will be donated as a “charitable contribution” to the yet-to-be-built Trump presidential library, and has been earmarked for a non-profit organization that is being set up in connection with the library.
The news organization will also pay over $1 million in legal fees to the law firm of Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito.
However, the settlement has received backlash on social media, as many have pointed out that in substance, Stephanopoulos’ comments are not much different from what U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in his ruling.
Judge Kaplan wrote in his ruling that the verdict that although the jury determined that Trump did not violate New York’s very narrow, very strict legal definition of rape, that did not mean that Trump did not, in actuality, rape Carroll.
According to Kaplan, the verdict did not mean Caroll’s lawyers “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.”
According to The New York Times, the settlement by ABC News is likely to embolden Trump or his sycophants to file defamation suits against news outlets who run critical or “aggressive” coverage of them.
The outlet noted that it is typically difficult for public figures like Trump to win defamation lawsuits against media organizations because plaintiffs must be able to prove an outlet knew a statement was false, or acted with a reckless disregard for accuracy in their reporting.
Elizabeth McNamara, a prominent media attorney who represented ABC News and Stephanopoulos, but spoke in her independent capacity, told the outlet that she expects the trend to continue.
“There’s been a pattern and practice for the past couple of years of using defamation litigation as a tactic to harass or test the boundary of case law,” McNamara said.
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