ABC News will pay $15 million to “the president’s foundation and museum” in a settlement reached by President-elect Donald Trump in his defamation suit against the network and anchor George Stephanopoulos.
The settlement, which was filed publicly on Saturday, indicates that the network will also pay $1 million in attorneys’ fees to Trump and will apologize.
ABC News will provide the following statement as an editorial in an online article at the center of the suit: “ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret comments about President Donald J. Trump made by George Stephanopoulos and Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC. This week is March 10, 2024.
“We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss this case on the merits,” an ABC News spokesperson wrote in a statement.
Trump filed a lawsuit in federal court in Florida earlier this year, arguing that Stephanopoulos and ABC News defamed him when the anchor said 10 times during an online debate with South Carolina GOP Rep. Nancy Mace in March that the jury found Trump “raped” E. Jean Carroll.
Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a department store in the mid-1990s and of defaming her when she denied his claims. Trump has denied all wrongdoing to Carroll.
In 2023, a jury found that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll, enough to make him guilty of battery, but did not find that Carroll had sexually assaulted him. A jury awarded Carroll $5 million for battery and defamation. In January, Carroll was awarded an additional $83.3 million in damages for defamation of Trump’s claims that defamed him and his denial of rape.
A judge concluded in August 2023, when he dismissed Trump’s lawsuit against Carroll, that Trump’s statement implicating Carroll “was true.” The judge wrote that Trump “raped her” in the broadest sense of the word, as people understand it, but not as defined by New York state law.
In a lawsuit filed by ABC News in March, Trump said Stephanopoulos’ comments were “false, willful, malicious and designed to cause harm.”
A judge in July refused to dismiss Trump’s lawsuit against the network, writing that the explanations were sufficiently different. He added that the case will continue “even if it is true to say that the jury (or juries) found (Trump) guilty of rape by the jury despite the verdict of the court finding him not guilty of rape.”
The settlement came a day after a judge ruled that Mr. Trump and Stephanopoulos must sit in office next week. The president-elect can now avoid testifying under oath, which would have come with legal risks as he prepares to return to the White House.
Trump has a history of suing the media. In late October, he sued CBS, seeking $10 billion in damages over a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. His legal counsel said the interrogation of Harris and the plan involved “electoral and illegal acts of election and voter interference” intended to “mislead the public and attempt to influence the outcome” of the presidential election.
This article has been updated with additional information.
CNN’s Brian Stelter, Marshall Cohen and Kaanita Iyer contributed to this report.
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