ABC agrees to give Trump millions to settle his lawsuit

NEW YORK ABC News has agreed to pay Donald Trump's presidential library $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos' inaccurate on-air claim that the president-elect was found civilly liable for rape of the writer E. Jean Carroll.

As part of the settlement made public Saturday, ABC News posted an editor's note on its website expressing regret over Stephanopoulos' statements during a March 10 segment of its This Week program. The network will also pay $1 million in legal fees to the law firm of Trump attorney Alejandro Brito.

The settlement agreement describes the payment for the ABC Presidential Library as a charitable contribution, with the money going to a nonprofit 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 under the terms of the court filing,” ABC News spokeswoman Jeannie Kedas said.

A Trump spokesperson declined to comment.

The settlement agreement was signed Friday, the same day a federal judge in Florida ordered Trump and Stephanopoulos to sit for separate depositions in the case next week. The regulations mean 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 Stephanopoulos' name. Debra O'Connell, president of ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks, also signed the agreement electronically.

ABC News must transfer the $15 million intended for Trump's library to an escrow account managed by the Britos law firm within 10 days, according to the agreement. The network must also pay Britos' legal fees within 10 days.

While significant, ABC's contribution to Trump's presidential library will likely cover only a fraction of the cost. Former President Barack Obama's library in Chicago, for example, was estimated to be worth $830 million in 2021.

Trump sued ABC and 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 misinterpreted the verdicts in Carroll's two civil lawsuits against Trump.

During a live interview this week with Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., Stephanopoulos falsely claimed that Trump had been found responsible for rape and defamation of the rape victim.

Neither verdict involved a finding of rape as defined by New York law.

In the first of the lawsuits that went to trial, Trump was convicted last year of sexual abuse and defamation against Carroll. A jury ordered him to pay him $5 million.

In January, in a second trial in federal court in Manhattan, Trump was found liable for additional defamation suits and ordered to pay Carroll $83.3 million.

Trump is appealing both verdicts.

Carroll, a former advice columnist, went public in her 2019 memoir her allegation that Trump raped her in the mid-1990s at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury Manhattan department store across from Trump Tower, after she They crossed paths at an entrance.

Trump denied the claim, saying he did not know Carroll and never met her at the store.

After Trump lashed out, calling Carroll a crackpot who made up a fraudulent and false story to sell his memoir, she sued him for unspecified monetary damages and demanded a retraction of what she called Trump's defamatory denials.

Testifying in April 2023, 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 broke my reputation, and I'm here trying to get my life back.”

After agreeing to help Trump buy a gift for a woman, Carroll testified that he pushed her against the wall of a dressing room, pressed his mouth to hers, pulled down her tights and pushed his hand then his penis inside her as she struggled against him.

She said she eventually pushed him away and ran away.

In upholding the first trial's $5 million judgment, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote that the unanimous verdict was almost entirely in Carroll's favor, except that the jury concluded that she had failed to prove that Trump had raped her in the narrow, technical sense of the term. a particular section of New York criminal law.

Kaplan, who presided over both of Carroll's trials against Trump, said the definition of rape in state code is much narrower than the definition of rape in common modern parlance, in some dictionaries, in some criminal statutes federal and state and elsewhere.

Under New York law, rape requires vaginal penetration by a penis. Forcible penetration without consent of the vagina or other bodily orifices with fingers or anything else is classified as sexual abuse.

The judge said the verdict did not mean that Carroll failed to prove that Mr. Trump raped her, because many people generally understand the word rape. Indeed… the jury concluded that Mr. Trump had indeed done just that.

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