ABC agrees to give $15 million to Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle defamation lawsuit

ABC agrees to give  million to Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle defamation lawsuit


ABC News Anchor George Stephanopoulos

Paula Lobo | ABC | Getty Images

ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million toward Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.

According to settlement documents made public Saturday, ABC will also post a note on its website expressing regret over the claim in a March 10 segment on Stephanopoulos’ “This Week” program and pay $1 million in legal fees to Trump’s lawyer.

In a statement, ABC News said: “We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing.”

Trump sued Stephanopoulos and ABC for defamation days after the anchor claimed during an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., that Trump had been “found liable for rape,” which misstated the verdicts in Carroll’s two lawsuits against him.

Last year, Trump was found liable for sexually assaulting and defaming Carroll and was ordered to pay her $5 million. In January, he was found liable on additional defamation claims and ordered to pay Carroll $83.3 million. Trump is appealing both verdicts.

Neither verdict involved a finding of rape as defined under New York law.

The judge in both cases, Lewis Kaplan, has said that the jury’s conclusion was that Carroll had failed to prove that Trump raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law.”

Kaplan noted that the definition of rape was “far narrower” than how rape is defined in common modern parlance, in some dictionaries, in some federal and state criminal statutes and elsewhere.

The judge said the verdict did not mean that Carroll “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed … the jury found that Mr. Trump, in fact, did exactly that.”



Source

James Comey to be arraigned on criminal charges that Trump sought
Politics

James Comey to be arraigned on criminal charges that Trump sought

FILE PHOTO: Former FBI Director, James Comey appears before the Senate Intelligence Committee in the Hart Office Building on Thursday June 08, 2017 in Washington, DC. Matt McClain | The Washington Post | Getty Images Former FBI Director James Comey is set to be arraigned Wednesday morning on criminal charges in Virginia that President Donald […]

Read More
U.S. air traffic control staffing hit for second day, delaying flights
Politics

U.S. air traffic control staffing hit for second day, delaying flights

A plane takes off from Hollywood Burbank Airport as operations resume a day after the airport operated for hours without a staffed control tower due to staffing shortages amid the U.S. government shutdown in Burbank, California, U.S., October 7, 2025. Daniel Cole | Reuters Air traffic control staffing issues are delaying flights for a second […]

Read More
Trump suggests not all furloughed workers will get back pay: ‘It depends’
Politics

Trump suggests not all furloughed workers will get back pay: ‘It depends’

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks as he and Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney (not pictured) meet in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., Oct. 7, 2025. Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday that some federal workers who have been furloughed during the government shutdown will not receive […]

Read More