NEW YORK (AP) — ABC Information has agreed to pay $15 million towards Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been discovered civilly responsible for raping author E. Jean Carroll.
As part of the settlement made public Saturday, ABC Information posted an editor’s note to its website expressing remorse over Stephanopoulos’ statements throughout a March 10 section on his “This Week” program. The community will even pay $1 million in authorized charges to the regulation agency of Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito.
The settlement settlement describes ABC’s presidential library cost as a “charitable contribution,” with the cash earmarked for a non-profit group that’s being established in reference to the yet-to-be constructed library.
“We’re happy that the events have reached an settlement to dismiss the lawsuit on the phrases within the court docket submitting,” ABC Information spokesperson Jeannie Kedas stated.
A Trump spokesperson declined remark.
The settlement settlement was signed Friday, the identical day a Florida federal decide ordered Trump and Stephanopoulos to take a seat for separate depositions within the case subsequent week. The settlement signifies that sworn testimony is not required.
The settlement bore Trump’s daring, distinct signature and an digital signature with the initials GRS in an area for Stephanopoulos’ identify. Debra OConnell, the president of ABC Information Group and Disney Leisure Networks, additionally e-signed the settlement.
ABC Information should switch the $15 million for Trump’s library to an escrow account that’s being managed by Brito’s regulation agency inside 10 days, in line with the settlement. The community should additionally pay Brito’s authorized charges inside 10 days.
Whereas sizeable, ABC’s contribution to Trump’s presidential library will probably cowl only a fraction of the fee. Former President Barack Obama’s library in Chicago, for instance, was estimated to price $830 million as of 2021.
Trump sued ABC and Stephanopoulos in federal court docket in Miami days after the community aired the section, during which the longtime “Good Morning America” anchor and “This Week” host repeatedly misstated the verdicts in Carroll’s two civil lawsuits in opposition to Trump.
Throughout a stay “This Week” interview with Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., Stephanopoulos wrongly claimed that Trump had been “discovered responsible for rape” and “defaming the sufferer of that rape.”
Neither verdict concerned a discovering of rape as outlined beneath New York regulation.
Within the first of the lawsuits to go to trial, Trump was discovered liable final yr of sexually abusing and defaming Carroll. A jury ordered him to pay her $5 million.
In January, at a second trial in federal court docket in Manhattan, Trump was discovered liable on extra defamation claims and ordered to pay Carroll $83.3 million.
Trump is interesting each verdicts.
Carroll, a former recommendation columnist, went public in a 2019 memoir along with her allegation that Trump raped her within the mid-Nineties at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxurious Manhattan division retailer throughout the road from Trump Tower, after they crossed paths at an entrance.
Trump denied her claim, saying he didn’t know Carroll and by no means bumped into her on the retailer.
After Trump lashed out, calling Carroll a “nut job” who invented “a fraudulent and false story” to promote her memoir, she sued him for unspecified financial damages and sought a retraction of what she stated have been Trump’s defamatory denials.
Testifying in April 2023, Carroll informed jurors: “I’m right here as a result of Donald Trump raped me, and after I wrote about it, he stated it didn’t occur. He lied and shattered my status, and I’m right here to attempt to get my life again.”
After she’d agreed to assist Trump store for a present for a lady, Carroll testified that he pushed her in opposition to a dressing room wall, stamped his mouth onto hers, yanked down her tights and shoved his hand after which his penis inside her whereas she struggled in opposition to him.
She stated she lastly kneed him off her and fled.
In upholding the $5 million judgment within the first trial, U.S. District Decide Lewis Kaplan wrote that the unanimous verdict was nearly completely in favor of Carroll, besides that the jury concluded she had didn’t show that Trump raped her “throughout the slim, technical that means of a selected part of the New York Penal Legislation.”
Kaplan, who presided over each of Carroll’s lawsuits in opposition to Trump, stated the definition of rape within the state code was “far narrower” than how rape is outlined in frequent trendy parlance, in some dictionaries, in some federal and state legal statutes and elsewhere.
Beneath New York regulation, a rape discovering requires vaginal penetration by a penis. Forcible penetration with out consent of the vagina or different bodily orifices by fingers or anything is labeled “sexual abuse.”
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The decide stated the decision didn’t imply that Carroll “didn’t show that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many individuals generally perceive the phrase ‘rape.’ Certainly … the jury discovered that Mr. Trump in reality did precisely that.”
Related Press writers Jill Colvin and Zeke Miller contributed to this report.
