ABC News agrees to pay $15 million to settle Trump defamation lawsuit. donald trump news
The lawsuit stems from a top anchor’s inaccurate on-air comments about a sexual assault scandal involving Trump.
ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by President-elect Donald Trump over false claims by the United States-based network’s anchor.
The lawsuit stems from anchor George Stephanopoulos’s on-air comments that Trump was “found liable for the rape” of author E. Jean Carroll.
According to documents filed Saturday, the network and anchor also agreed to make a public apology for the comments during a live interview this week with representative Nancy Mace.
The terms of the agreement required ABC News to donate $15 million to a fund dedicated to a “Presidential Foundation and Museum” for Trump. The documents say the broadcaster will pay an additional $1 million in attorney fees.
Trump sued ABC and Stephanopoulos in federal court in Miami days after the network aired that segment, in which the longtime Good Morning America anchor and This Week host sought judgments in Carroll’s two civil lawsuits against Trump. Was repeatedly declared wrong.
A 2023 case filed by the author found Trump liable for sexual assault – a separate crime from rape under New York law.
In the first of the suits to go to trial, Trump was found liable last year for sexually assaulting and defaming Carroll. A jury ordered him to pay $5 million.
In January, in a second trial in federal court in Manhattan, Trump was found liable for additional defamation claims and ordered to pay Carroll $83.3 million.
Trump is appealing both decisions.
Carroll, a former advice columnist, went public with her allegation in a 2019 memoir that Trump raped her in the mid-1990s at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury Manhattan department store across the street from Trump Tower, when they Had crossed paths at an entrance.
The case was settled a day after Judge Lisette M. Reed requested testimony from both Trump and Stephanopoulos.
The settlement is the latest addition to a series of legal successes for Trump since his November 5 presidential election victory.
Last month, a US appeals court dismissed charges against Trump related to the alleged misuse of classified documents after leaving the White House.
U.S. special counsel Jack Smith also halted a separate federal case related to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, though Trump still faces fraud charges in the Georgia case over the same issue.
A judge also indefinitely postponed Trump’s May sentencing in the hush money case, the only criminal charge against him to go to trial.
