ABC has settled a defamation lawsuit with Donald Trump and will pay $15m towards his presidential library.
The settlement describes the funding as a “charitable contribution” from the US broadcaster, which also agreed to pay $1m in legal fees to Mr Trump’s attorney Alejandro Brito’s law firm.
The claim concerned a segment of George Stephanopoulos’ This Week programme on 10 March, where he said Mr Trump had been found civilly liable for raping the writer E. Jean Carroll.
Interviewing South Carolina representative Nancy Mace, a Republican, the presenter said Mr Trump had been “found liable for rape” and “defaming the victim of that rape”.
In 2023, a jury found Mr Trump liable for sexually abusing the writer in a Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York in the mid-1990s.
A jury found Mr Trump civilly liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll last year. Pic: AP
The jury also found him liable for defaming her after she wrote about the incident in a 2019 memoir.
Then, at a second trial in a Manhattan federal court in January, Mr Trump was found liable on additional defamation claims and ordered to pay Ms Carroll $83.3m.
Neither verdict involved a finding of rape under New York law, which is defined as vaginal penetration by a penis.
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From January: E Jean Carroll leaves court after verdict
When upholding the judgment in the first trial, US district judge Lewis Kaplan wrote that the jury found Ms Carroll had failed to prove that Mr Trump raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law”.
Mr Trump is appealing both verdicts and has denied his claims. He insists he did not know Ms Carroll and never ran into her at the store.
As part of the settlement, ABC News has included an editor’s note on their original coverage of Mr Stephanopoulos’ interview, saying 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 firm within 10 days.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the broadcaster Jeannie Kedas said: “We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing.”
