The lawsuit stemmed from a top anchor’s inaccurate on-air remarks about a sexual abuse case involving Trump.
ABC News has agreed to pay $15m to settle a defamation suit filed by President-elect Donald Trump over an inaccurate claim by the United States-based network’s anchor. The lawsuit stemmed from comments made by anchor George Stephanopoulos that Trump had been “found liable for raping” writer E Jean Carroll.
Based on the documents filed Saturday, the network and the anchor will also publicly apologize for the live This Week interview with Representative Nancy Mace.
The settlement terms oblige ABC News to contribute $15m to the “presidential foundation and museum” in favor of Trump. As said in the documents, a further $1m, payable to the lawyer’s fees, follows.
Trump sued ABC and Stephanopoulos in federal court in Miami days after the network broadcast the report, in which the seasoned Good Morning America anchor and This Week host repeatedly made false statements about the verdicts in Carroll’s two civil lawsuits against Trump.
Trump had been adjudged guilty of sexual abuse-a less serious crime than rape as defined by New York Penal Law-in a 2023 case filed by the novelist. In the first of the lawsuits to go to trial, Trump was last year found liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll. A jury ordered him to pay her $5m.
In January, at a second trial in federal court in Manhattan, Trump was found liable on additional defamation claims and ordered to pay Carroll $83.3m.
Former advice columnist Carroll became public in a 2019 memoir with her claim 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.
The case was settled a day after Judge Lisette M Reid requested depositions from Trump and Stephanopoulos. The settlement marks the latest in a long list of legal victories Trump has scored since his triumph in the November 5 presidential election.
