ABC has agreed to contribute $15 million to Donald Trump‘s presidential foundation and museum as part of a settlement reached in Trump’s defamation case against the network, according to a court filing today.
Trump sued the network earlier this year over remarks that This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos made during a contentious interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) in March.
The network also will publish a statement that will be attached to an online article on the show, sayind that “ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements made during an interview by George Stephanopulous with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 2024.”
The network also will pay $1 million in legal fees.
During the interview with Mace, Stephanopoulos said that “juries have found” Trump “liable for rape.” In a June ruling, a federal judge refused to dismiss the case.
Last year, a civil jury found that Trump was liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump contended that he was defamed as Stephanopoulos did not make the distinction.
The judge in Carroll’s case, Lewis Kaplan, wrote in a later ruling. “The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
Trump is appealing the jury’s verdicts in the Carroll civil case, in which juries have awarded her almost $90 million in damages.
More to come.