ABC to pay $15 million to settle a defamation suit brought by Trump

ABC News agreed Saturday to give $15 million to President-elect Donald Trump's future presidential foundation and museum to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by Trump this spring concerning on-air statements made by the network's star anchor George Stephanopoulos.

Under the terms of a settlement agreement filed in US District Court in Miami, ABC News and Stephanopoulos said they would soon publish a statement saying they "regret" remarks that the anchor made about Trump during a televised interview in March.

ABC News, which is owned by The Walt Disney Co., will pay Trump an additional $1 million for his legal fees.

The outcome of the lawsuit marks an unusual victory for Trump in his ongoing legal campaign against national news organisations. Several of his previous attempts to sue media outlets for defamation, including lawsuits against CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post, ended in defeat.

"We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing," a spokesperson for ABC News said Saturday.

Trump's lawyers and a spokesperson for his transition did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

During the interview that prompted the lawsuit, Stephanopoulos asked Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., who has spoken publicly about being raped as a teenager, why she had continued to support Trump after he was found liable for rape in a civil case in New York City last year.

In that case, a federal jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, but it did not find him liable for rape. Still, the judge who oversaw the proceeding later clarified that because of New York's narrow legal definition of rape, the jury's verdict did not mean that Carroll had "failed to prove that Mr. Trump 'raped' her as many people commonly understand the word 'rape.'"

Trump ultimately sued ABC, accusing Stephanopoulos of harming his reputation by saying multiple times on-air that he had been found liable for raping Carroll.

The settlement announced Saturday required ABC to place an editor's note at the bottom of an online article about the interview with Mace. The note was to read: "ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements regarding President Donald J. Trump made during an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC's This Week on March 10, 2024."

The agreement was made public one day after a federal magistrate judge working on the defamation case ordered Trump to sit for a deposition next week in Florida. Stephanopoulos was also scheduled to sit for a deposition next week.