ABC’s $15 Million Tribute to Donald Trump | Opinion

Donald Trump has always been America’s lawfare king. He delayed and rejected cases against him for using fraud, threats and violence to try to steal the 2020 election and for getting away with important U.S. secrets. He took advantage of the stupidity of the smaller fraud cases admitted in New York and acted like the victim.

But now we have arrived at a darker day in the Trump legal leadership. ABC News has paid $15 million in repayment demanded by a president in a clearly frivolous case. It’s not enough that self-serving sycophants are likely to book his hotels and golf courses and gobble up his gold watches, sneakers and Bitcoin. Now Trump is being rewarded for making one of his many baseless claims against the mainstream media for failing to kiss the ring.

In the lawsuit, Trump alleged that George Stephanopoulos of ABC News defamed him by claiming that Trump was liable for rape during the E. Jean Carroll civil trial in New York. The settlement was accompanied by an apology and an additional $1 million payment to cover Trump’s legal fees in the case.

But there was no case that could be solved. Thanks to the First Amendment, comments about public officials and public figures are protected by civil tort laws when lies are alleged to damage one’s reputation. Under a famous case called New York Times v. SullivanThese public figures cannot claim damages without proving that the accused party recklessly disregarded the falsity of their statements.

So has Stephanopoulos carelessly ignored something true here? He said Trump was held liable for rape. But as Trump knows, he was on solid ground.

When E. Jean Carroll told people that she had won her civil rape lawsuit against Trump, Trump sued her for defamation, much like he sued ABC News over the same words. In dismissing Trump’s lawsuit against Carroll, the judge noted, “It is accordingly the ‘truth’ relevant here that Mr. Trump digitally raped Ms. Carroll.” Truth is an absolute defense in a defamation case.

This is why any first-year law student could have rejected Trump’s lawsuit against ABC News. But it gets worse. Libel lawsuits involve damage to reputation. To win, Trump would have had to prove that Stephanopoulos’ remark damaged Trump’s presidential campaign or his corporate reputation. But why? be Remark so important? Many people – rightly – said the same thing. And more importantly: Trump won The 2024 election is, despite what Stephanopoulos and others have said, and now Trump’s business empire is – disgustingly – doing better than ever.

The ABC case should have ended the same as Trump’s frivolous lawsuit against Hillary Clinton. Trump falsely claimed there was a conspiracy between Clinton and the FBI regarding his ties to Russia. Last year, the lawsuit was not only dismissed, but Trump was also ordered to pay nearly $1 million after the court called it “completely frivolous” and described Trump as the “mastermind of strategic abuse of the court process.”

So what’s left to explain ABC’s spinelessness? Why? The Washington Post And Los Angeles Times Abandon plans to support the president in the last election? Why did Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Jeff Bezos’ Amazon decide to donate $1 million each to Trump’s inauguration committee? It’s not like people haven’t made friends with presidents before, but this time it feels different. Companies that curry favor have been replaced by those that respond to a climate of fear – of criminal lawsuits, of punitive regulatory responses – and the fear that democracy will be replaced by a kind of kleptofeudalism.

Things will only get worse if people don’t fight back. Strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP lawsuits) have been around for years. It is not for nothing that they are popular with real estate developers and stifle public criticism of planned construction projects. The idea is not to win. It’s about driving your opponent into bankruptcy with legal fees. Many states have special procedures in place to quickly and inexpensively resolve such frivolous lawsuits. Where these laws do not exist, judges have the power to consolidate motion practices, tightly control discovery, and issue early summary judgments. Judges should use these tools and lawyers should volunteer to protect victims. If they don’t, bullying and blackmail will increase exponentially.

Thomas G. Moukawsher is a former complex litigation judge in Connecticut and former co-chair of the American Bar Association Committee on Employee Benefits. He is the author of the new book, The Common Mistake: Unnecessary Complexity in Dishes and 50 Ways to Reduce It.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.