ABC settles Trump defamation suit for $US15 million

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ABC settles Trump defamation suit for $US15 million

ABC News has agreed to pay $US15 million ($A24m) towards 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 on 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 $US1 million ($A1.6m) 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 Republican Nancy Mace, that Trump had been “found liable for *****”, which misstated the verdicts in Carroll’s two lawsuits against him.

Last year, Trump was found liable for ********* assaulting and defaming Carroll and was ordered to pay her $US5 million ($A7.9m).

In January, he was found liable on additional defamation claims and ordered to pay Carroll $US83.3 million ($A131m). Trump is appealing both verdicts.

Neither verdict involved a finding of ***** 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 ****** her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law”.

Kaplan noted that the definition of ***** was “far narrower” than how ***** 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 ‘******’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘*****.’ Indeed … the jury found that Mr Trump in fact did exactly that.”

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