ABC News has agreed to pay US President-elect Donald Trump $15 million (£12 million) to settle a defamation lawsuit for falsely claiming he was "convicted of rape". George Stephanopoulos repeated those comments on March 10 this year in an interview where he confronted female lawmakers over their support for Trump. A jury in a civil trial last year found Trump guilty of "sexual abuse", which has a clear definition in New York state law. As part of Saturday's settlement, first reported by Fox News Digital, ABC will also issue a statement expressing "regret" for Stephanopoulos' comments. According to the settlement, ABC News will pay $15 million in charitable donations to "presidential foundations and museums established by or for plaintiffs established by past United States presidents". The network also agreed to pay $1 million towards Trump's legal costs. As part of the settlement, the network will include an editor's note at the end of its March 10, 2024, online news article about the story. "ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret the comments about President Donald J. Trump made by George Stephanopoulos during an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC's This Week on March 10, 2024," it read. In a statement, an ABC News spokesperson said the company was "pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit based on the terms contained in the court filing."
In 2023, a New York civil court found that Trump sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room in 1996. He was also found guilty of defamation against a columnist for the magazine. Judge Lewis Kaplan said the jury concluded that Trump failed to prove that he raped Carroll "in the narrow technical sense of certain sections of the New York criminal code."
Judge Kaplan noted that the definition of rape is "much narrower" than the definition of rape in some dictionaries and modern usage in other criminal statutes. In another case heard by the same judge, a jury ordered President Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million for further defamatory remarks. During the March 10 broadcast, Stephanopoulos asked Republican Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina how she could support Trump. The host mistakenly said, "The judge and two different juries found him guilty of rape."
Stephanopoulos repeated this claim 10 times during the broadcast. Before the ruling, a federal judge had ordered Trump and Stephanopoulos to testify under oath at depositions next week. President Trump also sued CBS, the BBC's US broadcasting partner, for "misleading conduct" related to his interview with Kamala Harris. In 2023, a judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit against CNN that claimed the network likened him to Adolf Hitler. His lawsuits against The New York Times and The Washington Post were also dismissed.
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