policy
ABC News can pay Donald Trump $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit the president-elect filed in March against broadcaster and anchor George Stephanopoulos.
The settlement, publicly filed Saturday within the Miami Division of the Southern District of Florida, says ABC will contribute $15 million to a “presidential foundation and museum established by or for plaintiff.” “and will pay $1 million in Trump’s legal fees.”
As a part of the agreement, the defendants were also ordered to issue a press release of “regret” in an editor's note for a March 10 segment of Stephanopoulos' “This Week” show wherein the host made false statements that Trump was civilly liable was made for the rape of the author E. Jean Carroll.
An ABC News spokesman said: “We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit under the terms contained in the court filing.” A spokesman and attorneys for Trump didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment.
Trump sued Stephanopoulos and ABC, owned by the Walt Disney Company, for defamation on March 18 after the host claimed that Trump was “liable for rape” during an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) – a misrepresentation of the verdicts in Carroll's two lawsuits against him.
Last yr, a jury in Manhattan concluded that Trump sexually abused and defamed Carroll, even failing to say that he committed a rape that the author had accused him of within the mid-Nineties. Notably, a judge later filed a motion to make clear that the jury in Carroll's case had determined that Trump's abuse against her amounted to rape, which has a “far narrower” definition in New York law .
“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was 'raped' within the meaning of New York criminal law does not mean that she could not prove that Mr. Trump 'raped' her, since many people use the word 'rape' “generally understood,'” wrote Judge Lewis A. Kaplan. “In fact, the jury concluded that Mr. Trump did indeed do just that, as the evidence presented below makes clear at trial.”
Trump's lawyers have repeatedly pushed back against this characterization, culminating of their defamation lawsuit against Stephanopoulos.
According to the criticism, Stephanopoulos claimed that Trump was “raped” greater than 10 times throughout the course of the host's interview with Mace. In the post, Stephanopoulos questioned why the representative, who has spoken publicly about her own experiences with rape as a young person, would support Trump's presidential campaign.
“Judges on two separate juries have found him guilty of rape and defamation of a victim of that rape. “How do you reconcile your support for Donald Trump with the statement we just saw?” asked Stephanopoulos Mace.
“These statements were and remain false and were made by Defendant Stephanopoulos with actual malice or with reckless disregard for the truth, as Defendant Stephanopoulos knows that these statements are patently and demonstrably false,” the lawsuit says, accusing ABC of “ “knowingly or recklessly” publish the “false and derogatory” statements.
The settlement caps a highly contentious yr for the president-elect.
In January, he was found answerable for further defamation charges against Carroll and ordered to pay her $83 million. Trump also faced criminal charges in Florida, Georgia and Washington, D.C., and was found guilty by a Manhattan jury in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide a hush-money payment to an adult film actress.
image credit : www.boston.com