ABC agrees to give $15 million to Donald Trump’s presidential library in defamation settlement | american news

On By Littum

ABC has settled a defamation suit with Donald Trump and will pay $15 million to his presidential library.

The settlement describes the funding as a “charitable contribution” from the US broadcaster, which also agreed to pay 1m. USD in legal fees for Mr. Trump’s lawyer Alejandro Brito’s law firm.

The claim related to a segment of George Stephanopoulos’ This Week program on March 10, in which he said Mr. Trump had been found civilly liable for the rape of author E. Jean Carroll.

In an interview with South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace, a Republican, the presenter said that Mr. Trump had been “known to be responsible for rape” and “defamation of the victim of this rape”.

In 2023, a jury found Trump liable sexually abused the author in a Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York in the mid-1990s.

E. Jean Carroll leaves New York federal court after former President Donald Trump appeared in court Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)
Picture:
A jury found Mr. Trump civilly liable for sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll last year. Picture: AP

The jury also found him liable for defaming her after she wrote about the incident in a 2019 memoir.

Then, at another trial in federal court in Manhattan in January, Mr. Trump it found liable for further defamation and ordered to pay Ms. Carroll $83.3 million.

None of the convictions involved a finding of rape under New York law, which is defined as vaginal penetration of a penis.

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From January: E Jean Carroll leaves court after sentencing

In upholding the verdict in the first trial, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote that the jury found Carroll had failed to prove that Trump raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of New York’s criminal code.”

Trump is appealing both convictions and has denied his allegations. He insists he did not know Mrs Carroll and never came across her in the shop.

As part of the settlement, ABC News has included an editor’s note about their original coverage of Mr. Stephanopoulos’ interview, in which they say he and the network “regret” the statements.

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ABC must also transfer the funds to an account managed by Mr. Brito’s company within 10 days.

In a statement, broadcaster spokesperson Jeannie Kedas said: “We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms of the lawsuit.”