Why ABC News settled for $15 million with Donald Trump

CNN-

George Stephanopoulos ended Sundays This Week without any mention of him or ABC News settling Donald Trump's defamation lawsuit against them. The suit was sparked by a segment on This Week, but ABC News did not report on television at all its agreement to pay $15 million to Trump's presidential foundation.

The low-key on-air approach is consistent with the network's attitude toward the settlement at large. This problem had to go, remarked an ABC executive on condition of anonymity.

But speculation about why ABC agreed to settle, and why now, and why at such a cost, has not gone away.

Judging by social media reactions to the news, savvy right-wing supporters think the why is obvious: ABC lied about Trump, they say, so now the network is being punished as a result.

Some Trump critics on the left are also certain they know what's going on: They say ABC and its parent company Disney are kowtowing to Trump for craven political purposes.

Ultimately, the reasons for the settlement could remain secret between the two parties. But media lawyers who spoke to CNN said it's rare to see a settlement at this stage of a legal dispute.

The lawsuit stems from a March 10, 2024 ABC segment in which Stephanopoulos repeatedly stated that Trump had been found responsible for rape in the E. Jean Carroll civil case. Trump has denied any wrongdoing against Carroll, but last year a jury found that Trump had sexually abused Carroll, enough to hold him liable for the battery, although it did not find that Carroll had proven that he had raped her.

Trump filed a lawsuit a week after Stephanopoulos' report, accusing him of actual malice, the high bar public figures must meet to prove they have been defamed. ABC filed a motion to dismiss the case, but in July Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga rejected those arguments and allowed it to move forward, meaning the network was subject to the discovery process. at trial, a fancy way of saying the presenter had his emails and other working documents reviewed.

Last week, with a trial date scheduled for April, the judge said ABC must immediately turn over all remaining documents to Trump's legal team. She also ordered that Stephanopoulos and Trump be impeached in the coming days. The settlement means that won't happen.

According to court documents, ABC and Trump's team agreed to the terms of the settlement last Friday. The settlement terms often remain confidential, but not this time; A court filing filed Saturday effectively announced the payment and ABC's apology, allowing Trump's allies to publicly celebrate.

Why would they do this now? That's the question Ken Turkel, an attorney at Turkel Cuva Barrios, asked a colleague this weekend. Turkel, who represents Sarah Palin in her defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, said he was just speculating, like other observers. But one obvious possibility is that perhaps they didn't want to actively pursue legal action against a sitting president.

Given the facts alleged in the parties' respective filings, that's probably the only thing that seems different in this case, he said.

In my experience, when media defendants fail at the dismissal stage, which happened in July, they focus on preparing for summary judgment to challenge the legal sufficiency of the plaintiff's claim, a- he declared. This raises the question of why ABC settled before the summary judgment stage.

Turkel also said there should be questions about whether the discovery process uncovered emails or other internal ABC data that damaged the networks' record.

That's what Erick Erickson, who practiced law before becoming a conservative radio host, said he remembered.

No, a $15 million settlement is not the cost of doing business. It's avoiding detection, Erickson wrote on X.

The funds have been earmarked for a presidential foundation and a Trump museum in the future, and one can only imagine how Trump might troll ABC with a fake news gallery or something similar.

ABC declined to comment on the reasons for its settlement.

The president-elect has a long litigation history, with numerous unsuccessful lawsuits against media outlets in the past. Some media law experts believed ABC had a good chance of beating him at trial, given the inherent difficulty of proving that Stephanopoulos acted with actual malice. But the trials also add uncertainty and a risk of serious reputational damage that ABC's parent company, Disney, is now avoiding.

Famed First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams told CNN there was no escaping the reality that the settlement was a major victory for Trump.

The case undoubtedly represented a real level of risk for ABC since George Stephanopoulos had inaccurately summarized the jury verdict as one in which the jury found Trump responsible for rape when instead they found him responsible for sexual abuse, not rape, Abrams said. But for someone, especially one about to become our president, held by a jury for committing an act of sexual abuse, receiving a sum of this magnitude as a settlement is concerning.

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