ABC Agrees to Pay $15 Million, Apologize in Trump Defamation Lawsuit Settlement

ABC has settled a defamation lawsuit Donald Trump brought over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air description of Trump being civilly liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll, which Stephanopoulos described as “rape,” The Associated Press reports. The network will pay $15 million, which will go toward Trump’s presidential library as part of the settlement. Stephanopoulos had wrongly stated in March that Trump had been “found liable for rape” and “defaming the victim of that rape” rather than sexual abuse during a live This Week interview.

As part of the agreement entered on Friday and made public on Saturday, which Fox News Digital first reported, ABC News apologized in an editor’s note included on the original March 10, 2024 story about the This Week episode that contained the misstatement. It reads: “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.”

In addition to the apology and the $15 million payment, the network will also pay an additional $1 million in legal fees to the law firm of Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, per the agreement. The payment toward the presidential library is described as a “charitable contribution” in the settlement agreement, with the funds being escrowed for a non-profit organization that is being established in connection to the future library.

A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s request for comment.

“We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing,” ABC News spokesperson Jeannie Kedas told the AP.

Trump sued ABC and Stephanopoulos in federal court in Miami shortly after the network aired the segment where the This Week host misstated the verdicts in Carroll’s two civil lawsuits against Trump, inaccurately connecting the verdicts with the word “rape.”
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In 2019, Carroll accused Trump of assault, alleging that the former president raped her in the dressing room of New York’s Bergdorf Goodman department store in the Nineties, and later filed a defamation suit over statements Trump made following her accusation. In 2022, she filed a separate lawsuit alleging additional defamatory statements by Trump, and a charge of battery under New York’s Adult Survivors Act.

In the first of the Carroll cases against Trump to go to trial, a jury determined Trump was liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll, who was awarded $5 million in damages in May 2023, but the jury did not find Trump liable for rape as defined under New York law. Judge Lewis Kaplan said that the verdict does 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.” For the second trial in January, Trump was found liable on additional defamation claims and Trump was ordered to pay Carroll $83.3 million in damages. Trump is appealing both verdicts.

This article was updated to include context regarding the jury’s sexual abuse decision and that Fox News Digital first reported the settlement.