Why ABC News settled with Donald Trump for $15 million

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George Stephanopoulos ended Sunday’s “This Week” program without any mention of him or ABC News settling Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against them. The suit was triggered by a segment on “This Week,” but ABC News has not reported on TV its agreement to pay $15 million to Trump’s presidential foundation at all.

The quiet approach on air is in keeping with the network’s attitude toward the settlement writ large. “This problem needed to go away,” an ABC executive remarked on condition of anonymity.

But the speculation – about why ABC agreed to settle, and why now, and why at such expense – has not gone away.

Judging from social media reactions to the news, partisan know-it-alls on the right think the “why” is obvious: ABC lied about Trump, they say, so now the network is being punished accordingly.

Some Trump critics on the left are also certain that they know what’s going on: They say ABC and parent company Disney are bowing to Trump for craven political purposes.

Ultimately, the reasons for the settlement may remain a secret between the two sides. But media lawyers who spoke with CNN said it is rare to see a settlement at this stage of a legal dispute.

The lawsuit stemmed from a March 10, 2024, ABC segment in which Stephanopoulos repeatedly said that Trump had been “found liable for rape” in the E. Jean Carroll civil case. Trump has denied all wrongdoing toward Carroll, but last year a jury found that Trump sexually abused Carroll, sufficient to hold him liable for battery, though it did not find that Carroll proved he raped her.

Trump filed suit one week after Stephanopoulos’ report, accusing him of “actual malice,” the high bar that public figures must meet to prove they were defamed. ABC filed a motion to dismiss the case, but in July, Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga rejected those arguments and allowed it to move forward, which meant the network was subjected to the pre-trial discovery process – a fancy way of saying that the anchorman had his emails and other work materials scrutinized.

Last week, with a trial date on the books for April, the judge said that ABC must hand over any remaining documents to Trump’s legal team right away. She also ordered both Stephanopoulos and Trump to be deposed in the coming days. The settlement means that won’t happen.

According to court documents, ABC and Trump’s team agreed to the settlement terms last Friday. Settlement terms are often kept confidential, but not this time; a court filing on Saturday effectively announced the payout and ABC’s apology, enabling Trump’s allies to publicly celebrate.

Why now?
“Why would they do this now?” is the question Ken Turkel, a trial attorney at Turkel Cuva Barrios, asked a colleague over the weekend. Turkel, who is representing Sarah Palin in her resurrected defamation suit against The New York Times, said he was merely speculating like other observers. But one obvious possibility is that “perhaps they didn’t want to be actively litigating against a sitting president.”

Given the facts as alleged in the parties’ respective filings, that’s “probably the only thing that looks different” about this case, he said.

“In my experience, when media defendants are unsuccessful at the dismissal stage,” which was in July, “they focus on preparing for summary judgment to challenge the legal sufficiency of a plaintiff’s claim,” he said. “It begs the question as to why ABC settled before the summary judgment stage.”

Turkel also said “you would have to consider” whether the discovery process unearthed emails or other internal ABC data that damaged the network’s case.

That’s what Erick Erickson, who practiced law before becoming a conservative radio host, said he took away.

“No, a $15 million settlement is not the cost of doing business. It is avoiding discovery,” Erickson wrote on X.

The funds have been earmarked to a Trump “presidential foundation and museum” in the future, and one can only imagine how Trump might troll ABC with a “Gallery of Fake News” or something similar.

ABC declined to comment on its reasons for settling.

In July of 2023, New York Judge Lewis Kaplan issued a clarification in the civil cases brought by author E. Jean Carroll against President-elect Donald Trump. A New York jury had ruled in May of that year that Trump was liable for sexual abuse and defamation against Carroll. According to New York criminal law, “rape” is narrowly defined as non-consenual vaginal penetration by a penis, and all other forceful acts of sexual assault are referred to as “sexual abuse.”

“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’” Kaplan wrote in the July ruling, dismissing an effort by Trump to lower the penalties awarded to Carroll. “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that,” Kaplan added.

The tug of war between New York’s criminal code and the common understanding of the word “rape” was at the center of a lawsuit, filed in March, thet Trump brought against ABC News, and which ABC News settled in the form of a $15 million payment to Trump’s presidential library fund earlier this month.

The president-elect alleged that ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos had defamed him when he stated during a March segment that Trump had been found liable for “rape” and “defaming the victim of that rape” rather than sexual abuse. Facing an order for depositions from both Stephanopoulos and Trump — and a prospective lengthy and invasive legal battle — the parties agreed to settle the dispute.

Among the rank-and-file of the network, however, the settlement is raising hackles. Within ABC News — among a number of its producers, editors, and other journalists involved in investigative and political coverage — the move was immediately met with quiet anger and frustration, an ABC News reporter set to cover the second Trump presidency, and two other sources with knowledge of internal reactions, tell Rolling Stone.

“It is frightening,” the ABC reporter says. “My fear is this sets a tone for the next four years and that the tone is: Do not upset the president … That’s not our job. I’m not the only person here who saw this as a big win for Donald Trump and a surrender [by us].”

A network staffer familiar with the situation adds that though there is relief among some that the case is over and done with before Trump retakes power in late January, others they’ve spoken to are “of course worried about a chilling effect” on some aggressive coverage, at ABC and elsewhere, of Trump and his allies.

The sources requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about a sensitive matter. Two of the sources characterized the multi-million-dollar settlement as a complete “capitulation” to Trump during a time when the president-elect and his government-in-waiting are openly threatening retribution against individuals, media outlets, and large corporations. Both of these sources mentioned they were advised by a peer or a superior to avoid talking to the press about the settlement.

To many at ABC, and to political and media observers outside the network and its corporate parent Disney, the precise reasons behind the settlement and its timing remain a gigantic question mark. “This problem needed to go away,” one ABC exec told CNN this week.

But among the MAGA elite, the jubilance — and their emboldened sense that Trumpian legal salvos against the media work — was difficult to hide. “Let this be a warning to all haters: Defamation is real, and your free trial of badmouthing just expired,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) declared on X (formerly Twitter), upon the weekend’s news of the settlement. Mace herself was Stephanopoulos’s interview subject in the allegedly defamatory segment.

Badmouthing a president, former president, or presidential candidate is not a crime, but Trump has embarked on a litigious spree against journalists and news outlets that have covered him disfavorably — or simply irked him in some way. The desired outcome may not necessarily even be verdicts and rulings, but rather the creation of a chilling effect on criticism of his future administration.

On Monday, Trump filed a civil lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and famed Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer, who shortly before November’s election released a poll showing Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump in the state by three points. Trump would go on to win Iowa by double digits.

“In my opinion, it was fraud and it was election interference,” Trump said during a press conference on Monday. “I think you have to do it,” he added of expanding his defamation lawsuits to more news outlets. “Because they’re very dishonest.”