Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
ABC News has agreed to pay US President-elect Donald Trump $15m (£12m) to settle a defamation lawsuit after the anchor falsely claimed he was found “liable for rape”.
George Stephanopoulos made these claims repeatedly during an interview on March 10 of this year, challenging the congresswoman about her support for Trump.
Jury trial in a civil case last year definitely Trump was responsible for “sexual assault,” which has a specific definition in New York law.
As part of Saturday’s settlement, which was first reported by Fox News Digital, ABC will also release a statement expressing its “regret” over Stephanopoulos’ statements.
According to the agreement, ABC News will pay $15 million as a charitable contribution to “a Presidential Foundation and Museum to be established by or for Plaintiff as established in the past by Presidents of the United States of America.”
The network also agreed to pay $1 million for Trump’s legal fees.
Under the agreement, the network will publish an editor’s note at the bottom of its online article about the story dated March 10, 2024.
It will read: “ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements about President Donald Trump made during George Stephanopoulos’ interview with Representative Nancy Mays on ABC’s This Week program on March 10, 2024.”
A spokesperson for ABC News said in a statement that the company is “pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms filed in court.”
In 2023, a New York civil court convicted Trump of sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room in 1996. He was also found guilty of libel against a magazine columnist.
Judge Lewis Kaplan said the jury concluded that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that Trump raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Code.”
Judge Kaplan noted that the definition of rape was “significantly narrower” than how rape is defined in common modern parlance, in some dictionaries and in criminal statutes elsewhere.
In a separate case, also presided over by the same judge, a jury ordered Trump to pay Ms. Carroll $83.3 million for additional defamatory statements.
During a March 10 broadcast, Stephanopoulos asked South Carolina Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mays how she could support Trump.
The host falsely said that “a judge and two separate juries found him guilty of rape.”
Stephanopoulos repeated this statement 10 times throughout the broadcast.
Ahead of the ruling, a federal magistrate ordered Trump and Stephanopoulos to testify under oath next week.
Trump also sued CBS, the BBC’s American broadcast partner, for “deceptive conduct” over an interview with Kamal Harris.
In 2023 a judge dismissed his defamation suit against CNN, in which he claimed the network compared him to Adolf Hitler.
He also dismissed lawsuits filed against the New York Times and the Washington Post.
