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ABC News will donate $15 million to Donald Trump’s incoming presidential foundation and museum to settle a defamation lawsuit against the network over on-air comments by George Stephanopoulos, one of its star anchors, on news media.
As part of the settlement, the network also agreed to add an editor’s note at the end of a March online article detailing ABC and the host’s “regret” over his comments during an interview with Nancy Mace, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives , expressed from South Carolina.
“ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements about President Donald J. Trump made by George Stephanopoulos during an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 2024,” the network agreed. ABC is owned by Walt Disney Co.
The network will also pay $1 million toward Trump’s legal fees.
Trump, who filed a lawsuit in federal court in Miami in March, claimed Stephanopoulos defamed him when the host said on his Sunday talk show that the president-elect had been found “responsible for rape” during an interview with Mace.
The congresswoman has spoken publicly about being raped as a teenager, and Stephanopoulos asked her during the interview how she could support Trump given that history.
A New York jury found Trump liable in civil cases for the sexual abuse – but not the rape – and subsequent defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll and ordered him to pay her more than $88 million in two verdicts. Trump appeals to them.
The agreement between ABC and the president-elect, dated December 13, was made public on Saturday.
“We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit under the terms of the court docket,” an ABC News spokesperson said in a statement. Stephanopoulos did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump’s lawyers and spokespersons for his transition team did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump has long denigrated the “mainstream media,” which he denounces as “fake news.”
The president-elect also has civil lawsuits pending against CBS News, journalist Bob Woodward and publisher Simon & Schuster, and is appealing the dismissal of a lawsuit he filed against CNN. He previously lost a libel lawsuit against The New York Times.
