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ABC News has agreed to donate $15 million to US President-elect Donald Trump’s future museum in order to settle a defamation lawsuit. Trump sued the network after anchor George Stephanopoulos claimed live on air that the real estate mogul-turned-politician was found liable for raping advice columnist E. Jean Carroll.
According to the settlement document made public on Saturday, ABC agreed to transfer $10 million to “a presidential foundation and museum” set up by Trump. The channel will also pay $1 million to Trump’s lawyers.
In addition to the payout, ABC published an editor’s note on its website, saying that the network and Stephanopoulos “regret statements regarding President J. Trump.”
“We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing,” ABC said in a brief statement.
The legal dispute stems from the episode of ABC News’ ‘This Week’ show aired on March 10, 2024. During an interview with Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace, Stephanopoulos stated that “Donald Trump has been found liable for rape by a jury.”
In May 2023, a Manhattan jury found Trump civilly liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages. In January 2024, a jury ruled in a second defamation trial that Trump must pay Carroll additional $83.3 million. The judge in both cases, Lewis Kaplan, said that the verdicts had failed to prove that Trump raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law,” according to the Associated Press.
In August 2023, a judge dismissed Trump’s defamation countersuit against Carroll.
According to Carroll, Trump assaulted her inside a New York department store sometime in the mid-1990s. Trump has denied any wrongdoing, describing the allegations as “a hoax and a lie.” He claimed that the cases brought by Carroll were part of a larger politically motivated smear campaign aimed at sabotaging his 2024 presidential election bid. The president-elected has also repeatedly accused “the lying media” of amplifying the spread of false information about him.
