Given George Stephanopoulos’ Carelessness, ABC’s Defamation Settlement With Trump Seems Prudent
In an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R–S.C.) on ABC’s This Week last March, host George Stephanopoulos repeatedly and inaccurately asserted that Donald Trump, now the president-elect, had been “found liable for rape.” A week later, Trump sued ABC and Stephanopoulos for defamation in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, noting that a jury had deemed Trump civilly liable for “sexual abuse,” not “rape.” Over the weekend, ABC News announced that it had reached a $15 million settlement with Trump in the form of a $15 million contribution to Trump’s presidential library. ABC also agreed to cover $1 million in Trump’s legal expenses.
The settlement is highly unusual in the annals of Trump’s many lawsuits against news outlets, which typically feature claims with a much weaker legal and empirical basis. Some Trump critics explicitly or implicitly faulted ABC for folding, saying its decision is apt to have a chilling impact on journalism. But any such threat can be mitigated by applying normal standards of journalistic care—standards that Stephanopoulos conspicuously failed to uphold in this case.
In his interview with Mace, Stephanopoulos was talking about two cases involving the journalist E. Jean Carroll’s allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. In one case, a New York jury last year concluded that Carroll had proven, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Trump had “sexually abused” her. The jurors also agreed that Trump had defamed Carroll by calling her a liar and awarded her $5 million in damages. But they expressly concluded that Carroll had failed to prove Trump had “raped” her.
What’s the difference? At the time of the verdict against Trump, New York defined “sexual abuse” as “sexual contact…by forcible compulsion.” A rape charge, by contrast, required “sexual intercourse,” which was limited to “vaginal penetration by a penis.” A bill that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law last January broadened the definition of “rape” to include any “nonconsensual vaginal, oral and anal sexual contact.” But when the jury issued its verdict in May 2023, the narrower definition of “rape” still applied.
In a related case, Carroll alleged that Trump’s post-verdict comments had defamed her by continuing to portray her as a liar. Last January, a jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
Neither verdict found Trump “liable for rape” as that term was legally defined at the time. And as Trump’s defamation complaint notes, Stephanopoulos was aware of that point.
After the first verdict, Stephanopoulos interviewed Carroll on Good Morning America. “Yesterday in the courtroom,” he said, “the first announcement was made, and it was that he was not found liable for rape. What were you thinking at that moment?” During the interview, Trump’s lawsuit notes, the on-screen banner said (accurately), “Former President Found Liable for Sexual Abuse & Defamation.” ABC later “posted a clip of the interview on its website” accompanied by the (accurate) summary, “Longtime advice columnist E. Jean Carroll said she feels ‘fantastic’ one day after a jury found former President Donald Trump liable for battery and defamation in her lawsuit against him.”
On the February 4, 2024, edition of This Week, Stephanopoulos again accurately noted (twice) that “juries have found [Trump] liable for sexual assault and defamation.” Yet five weeks later, when Stephanopoulos interviewed Mace, he claimed no fewer than 12 times that Trump had been deemed liable for “rape.”
After the interview aired, according to Trump’s complaint, his lawyers “contacted Defendants seeking a retraction of the false and defama
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