ABC Agrees To Give $15 Million to Trump’s Presidential Library To Settle Defamation Lawsuit

ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million toward President-elect Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that Trump had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.As part of the settlement made public late 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” program. The network will also pay $1 million in legal fees to the law firm of Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito.The settlement agreement describes ABC’s presidential library payment as a “charitable contribution,” with the money earmarked for a non-profit organization 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 spokewoman Jeannie Kedas said.A Trump representative declined comment.The settlement agreement was signed Friday, the same day a Florida federal judge ordered Trump and Mr. Stephanopoulos to sit for separate depositions in the case next week. The settlement means that sworn testimony is no longer required.The agreement bore Trump’s bold, distinct signature and an electronic signature with the initials GRS in a space for Mr. Stephanopoulos’ name. The president of ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks, Debra O’Connell, also e-signed the agreement.ABC News must transfer the $15 million for Trump’s library to an escrow account that’s being managed by Mr. Brito’s law firm within ten days, according to the agreement. The network must also pay Mr. Brito’s legal fees within ten days.While sizeable, ABC’s contribution to Trump’s presidential library will likely cover just a fraction of the cost. President Obama’s library at Chicago, for example, was estimated to cost $830 million as of 2021.Trump sued ABC and Mr. Stephanopoulos in federal court at 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 Trump.During a live “This Week” interview with Congressswoman Nancy Mace, Mr. Stephanopoulos wrongly claimed that 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, Trump was found liable last year of sexually abusing and defaming Ms. Carroll. A jury ordered him to pay her $5 million. In January, at a second trial in federal court at Manhattan, Trump was found liable on additional defamation claims and ordered to pay Ms. Carroll $83.3 million.Trump is appealing both verdicts.Ms. Carroll, who is a former advice columnist, went public in a 2019 memoir with her allegation that 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.Trump denied her claim, saying he didn’t know Ms. Carroll and never ran into her at the store.After 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.Testifying 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.”After she’d agreed to help Trump shop for a gift for a woman, Ms. Carroll testified that he pushed her against a dressing room wall, stamped his mouth onto hers, yanked down her tights and shoved his hand and then his penis inside her while she struggled against him.She said she finally kneed him off her and fled.In upholding the $5 million judgment in the first trial, a federal district judge, Lewis Kaplan, wrote that the unanimous verdict was almost entirely in favor of Ms. Carroll, except that the jury concluded she had failed to prove that Trump raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law.”Judge Kaplan, who presided over both of Ms. Carroll’s lawsuits against Trump, said the definition of rape in the state code was “far narrower” than how rape is defined in common modern parlance, in some dictionaries, in some federal and state criminal statutes and elsewhere.Associated Press

ABC Agrees To Give $15 Million to Trump’s Presidential Library To Settle Defamation Lawsuit

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