ABC News to Donate $15 Million to Trump Presidential Library to Settle Defamation Lawsuit

ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million to Donald Trump’s US presidential library to settle a lawsuit over host George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air claim 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 the Stephanopoulos story. 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 under the terms of the court record.”

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

Last year, Trump was found liable for sexually assaulting and defaming Carroll and ordered to pay her $5 million. In January, he was found liable for 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 by New York law.

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

Kaplan noted that the definition of rape was “much narrower” than the way rape is defined in common modern language, 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.'” “In fact…the jury concluded that Mr. Trump did exactly that.”