ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos
Paula Lobo | ABC | Getty Images
ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million Donald Trump’s Presidential Library sues anchor George Stephanopoulos for inaccurately claiming on air that the president-elect was civilly liable for the rape of author E. Jean Carroll Reach a settlement.
ABC will also post a statement on its website expressing regret for the allegations made during Stephanopoulos’ “This Week” show on March 10 and paying Trump’s attorneys $1 million, according to settlement documents released Saturday. Legal fees.
“We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit under the terms contained in the court filing,” ABC News said in a statement.
Days later, Trump sued Stephanopoulos and ABC for defamation after the anchor claimed in an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., that Trump was “convicted of rape.” Misrepresented the verdicts in two of Carroll’s lawsuits against him.
Last year, Trump was found to have sexually assaulted and defamed Carroll and was ordered to pay her $5 million. In January, he was found liable for additional defamation claims and ordered to pay Carroll $83.3 million. Trump is appealing both convictions.
Neither verdict involved the crime of rape as defined by New York law.
Lewis Kaplan, the judge in both cases, said the jury concluded that Carroll failed to prove that Trump raped her “within the narrow technical meaning of a specific section of New York’s criminal law.”
Kaplan noted that the definition of rape is “much narrower” than the definition of rape found in modern common parlance in some dictionaries, some federal and state criminal statutes and elsewhere.
The judge said the verdict did not mean Carroll “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her, as many people commonly understand the term ‘rape.'” In fact… the jury found that Mr. Trump did Did it.
