ABC News agrees settlement with Donald Trump over defamation claim
15 December 2024, 07:44
The president-elect sued over claims made by anchorman George Stephanopoulos.
ABC News has agreed to pay 15 million US dollars towards Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.
As part of the settlement made public on Saturday, ABC News posted an editor’s note to its website expressing regret over Mr Stephanopoulos’ statements during a March 10 segment on his This Week programme.
The network will also pay one million US dollars in legal fees to the law firm of Mr Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito.
The settlement agreement describes ABC’s presidential library payment as a “charitable contribution”, with the money earmarked for a non-profit organisation that is being established in connection with the yet-to-be built library.
“We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing,” ABC News spokeswoman Jeannie Kedas said.
A Trump spokesperson declined to comment.
The settlement agreement was signed on Friday, the same day a Florida federal judge ordered Mr Trump and Mr Stephanopoulos to sit for separate depositions in the case next week.
The settlement means that sworn evidence is no longer required.
The agreement bore Mr Trump’s bold, distinct signature and an electronic signature with the initials GRS in a space for Mr Stephanopoulos’ name.
Debra OConnell, the president of ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks, also e-signed the agreement.
ABC News must transfer the 15 million US dollars for Mr Trump’s library to an escrow account that is being managed by Mr Brito’s law firm within 10 days, according to the agreement.
The network must also pay Mr Brito’s legal fees within 10 days.
While sizeable, ABC’s contribution to Mr Trump’s presidential library will likely cover just a fraction of the cost.
Former President Barack Obama’s library in Chicago, for example, was estimated to cost 830 million US dollars as of 2021.
Mr Trump sued ABC and Mr Stephanopoulos in federal court in Miami days after the network aired the segment, in which the longtime Good Morning America anchor and This Week host repeatedly misstated the verdicts in Ms Carroll’s two civil lawsuits against Mr Trump.
During a live This Week interview with Representative Nancy Mace, a Republican, Mr Stephanopoulos wrongly claimed that Mr Trump had been “found liable for rape” and “defaming the victim of that rape”.
Neither verdict involved a finding of rape as defined under New York law.
In the first of the lawsuits to go to trial, Mr Trump was found liable last year of sexually abusing and defaming Ms Carroll.
A jury ordered him to pay her five million US dollars.
In January, at a second trial in federal court in Manhattan, Mr Trump was found liable on additional defamation claims and ordered to pay Ms Carroll 83.3 million US dollars.
Mr Trump is appealing against both verdicts.
Ms Carroll, a former advice columnist, went public in a 2019 memoir with her allegation that Mr Trump raped her in the mid-1990s at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury Manhattan department store across the street from Trump Tower, after they crossed paths at an entrance.
Mr Trump denied her claim, saying he did not know Ms Carroll and never ran into her at the store.
After Mr Trump lashed out, calling Ms Carroll a “nut job” who invented “a fraudulent and false story” to sell her memoir, she sued him for unspecified monetary damages and sought a retraction of what she said were Trump’s defamatory denials.
Giving evidence in April 2023, Ms Carroll told jurors: “I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen.
“He lied and shattered my reputation, and I’m here to try and get my life back.”
