Why ABC News reached a $15 million settlement with Donald Trump

CNN
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George Stephanopoulos quit “This Week” on Sunday without he or ABC News settling the defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump. The lawsuit was sparked by a segment on “This Week,” but ABC News did not report on television at all about its agreement to pay $15 million to Trump’s presidential foundation.

The calm demeanor on air is consistent with the station’s stance toward the deal broadly. “This problem had to go away,” remarked one ABC executive on condition of anonymity.

But speculation about why ABC agreed to a deal, and why now and why at such a cost, has not gone away.

Judging by social media reactions to the news, partisan know-it-alls on the right believe the “why” is obvious: ABC lied about Trump, they say, and now the network will be punished accordingly.

Some Trump critics on the left are also sure they know what’s going on: They say ABC and parent company Disney are kowtowing to Trump for cowardly political purposes.

Ultimately, the reasons for the agreement between the two sides could remain a secret. However, media lawyers who spoke to CNN said an agreement rarely occurs at this stage of litigation.

The lawsuit arose from a March 10, 2024, ABC segment in which Stephanopoulos repeatedly said that Trump was “held liable for rape in the civil trial against E. Jean Carroll.” Trump has denied any wrongdoing against Carroll, but last year made the case A jury found that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll, which was enough to hold him liable for assault, although it did not find that Carroll had proven that he had raped her.

Trump filed a lawsuit a 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 proceed, meaning the network was subject to the pre-trial discovery process — a fancy way of saying host His E -Emails and other work materials were checked.

Last week, with the trial scheduled for April, the judge said ABC must immediately turn over all remaining documents to Trump’s legal team. She also ordered the removal of Stephanopoulos and Trump 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; In a court filing Saturday, ABC’s payout and apology were effectively announced, allowing Trump’s allies to publicly celebrate.

“Why would they do that now?” Ken Turkel, trial attorney at Turkel Cuva Barrios, asked a colleague over the weekend. Turkel, who is representing Sarah Palin in her resurrected libel lawsuit against The New York Times, said he, like other observers, was merely speculating. But one obvious possibility is that “they may not have wanted to actively take action against a sitting president.”

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

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

Turkel also said “one would have to think about” whether the discovery process uncovered emails or other internal ABC data that damaged the network’s case.

Erick Erickson, who worked as a lawyer before becoming a conservative radio host, took this with him.

“No, a $15 million severance payment is not a business expense. It avoids detection,” Erickson wrote on X.

The funds are earmarked for a Trump “presidential foundation and museum” in the future, and one can only imagine how Trump could troll ABC with a “fake news gallery” or something similar.

ABC declined to comment on the reasons for the agreement.

The president-elect has a long history of litigation, with numerous unsuccessful lawsuits against news outlets in the past. Some media law experts believed ABC had a good chance of beating him in court because it was difficult to prove that Stephanopoulos had acted “actually maliciously.” But litigation also increases uncertainty and the risk of serious reputational damage – factors that ABC’s parent company Disney now avoids.

Floyd Abrams, a prominent First Amendment lawyer, told CNN, “There’s no escaping the reality” that the deal is a “huge victory” for Trump.

“The case undoubtedly posed real risk to ABC because George Stephanopoulos incorrectly summarized the jury’s verdict as saying the jury had found Trump responsible for rape, but instead found him responsible for ‘sexual abuse’ rather than rape.” said Abrams. “But it is troubling that a person, particularly a person who is now set to become our president, is convicted by a jury of sexual abuse to receive compensation of this magnitude.”