ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos agreed on Saturday to pay $15m to a foundation and museum to be established by Donald Trump as part of a settlement in the defamation lawsuit Trump filed against the network earlier this year.
In addition to $15m, ABC News and Stephanopoulos agreed to issue statements of regret surrounding a March interview Stephanopoulos had with South Carolina’s Republican representative – and Trump ally – Nancy Mace in which he repeatedly claimed that Trump had been found “liable for rape”.
During the interview, Stephanopoulos said numerous times that a jury had found Trump “liable for rape” in a lawsuit filed by the columnist E Jean Carroll. Carroll had accused Trump of sexually assaulting and raping her at Bergdorf Goodman, a New York City department store, in the 1990s.
Last year, a jury found that Trump had “sexually abused” Carroll under New York law, but did not rape her. Trump was subsequently ordered to pay Carroll $5m. He was also ordered to pay Carroll $83.3m after being found liable on defamation claims.
Following Stephanopoulos’s remarks in his interview with Mace, Trump filed the defamation lawsuit against the US network and Stephanopoulos, one of ABC News’s main anchors.
Stephanopoulos remained defiant, telling talkshow host Stephen Colbert in May that he would not be “cowed out of doing my job because of a threat”.
According to Saturday’s settlement, ABC News will “transfer in the amount of fifteen million US dollars … to be made to a presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for [Donald Trump], as presidents of the United States of America have established in the past … .”
The settlement also states that ABC News and Stephanopoulos “shall publicly publish the following statement by adding it as an editor’s note at the bottom of a March 10, 2024 online article [surrounding Stephanopoulos’s interview]: ‘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’”.
The network and Stephanopoulos will also pay $1m in Trump’s attorney fees, the settlement said.
In exchange, Trump will file a dismissal of the lawsuit and “take whatever other actions necessary to ensure that the action is dismissed in its entirety with prejudice”.
In a statement to the Hill, an ABC News spokesperson said: “We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing.”
Trump has yet to publicly comment on the settlement.
