An MSNBC host said ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos’s comments, which led President-elect Donald Trump to file a defamation lawsuit against the Disney-owned network, “seem to be false” — despite the fact that the company Agreed to pay $15 million to settle the claim.
Simone Sanders-Townsend, host of Sunday’s “The Weekend” talk show on Comcast’s left-leaning cable channel, said that ABC News is paying the settlement “It feels like it has a really chilling effect.”
Sanders-Townsend, a former Biden White House spokeswoman, said during the broadcast that “what Stephanopoulos said” about Trump being liable for rape “appears to be consistent with what the judge said after the fact.. .” His comments It was reported by Mediate.
He said Stephanopoulos is paying Trump’s lawyers $1 million of his own money, while ABC News is paying $15 million.
“This is crazy,” she said.
The post sought comment from ABC News, MSNBC and the Trump transition.
ABC News on Saturday agreed to pay Trump’s presidential library $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor Stephanopoulos’s false on-air claim that the president-elect was accused of raping author E. Jean Carroll. Was found civilly liable.
As part of the settlement made public Saturday, ABC News posted an editor’s note on its website expressing regret over Stephanopoulos’s statements during the March 10 segment of his “This Week” program.
ABC News spokeswoman Jenny Kedas said, “We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms filed in court.”
The settlement agreement was signed on Friday, the same day a federal judge in Florida ordered Trump and Stephanopoulos to sit down for separate depositions in the case next week. The agreement means sworn testimony is no longer required.
The agreement was marked with Trump’s bold, distinctive signature and an electronic signature with the initials GRS in place of Stephanopoulos’ name.
Debra O’Connell, president of ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks, also e-signed the agreement.
According to the agreement, ABC News must transfer $15 million to an escrow account for Trump’s library that is being managed by Brito’s law firm.
The network must also pay Brito’s legal fees within 10 days.
Trump sued ABC and Stephanopoulos in federal court in Miami days after the network aired that segment, in which the longtime “Good Morning America” anchor and “This Week” host sued Carroll’s two civil servants against Trump. The verdicts in the cases were repeatedly declared wrong.
During a live “This Week” interview with Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC), Stephanopoulos falsely claimed that Trump was “found liable for rape” and “vilified that rape victim.”
Neither verdict included a finding of rape as defined under New York law.
In the first of the cases to go to trial, Trump was found liable Last year, Carroll was sexually assaulted and defamed. a jury Ordered him to pay $5 million.
In January, in a second trial in federal court in Manhattan, Trump was found liable on additional defamation claims and ordered Carroll to pay $83.3 million.
Trump is appealing both decisions.
Carroll, a former advice columnist, went public with her allegations in a 2019 memoir That Trump raped her at Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990sAfter crossing paths at an entrance to a luxury Manhattan department store, across the street from Trump Tower.
trump rejected his claimStating that he did not know Carroll and never met her at the store.
When Trump called Carroll a “madman” who fabricated a “fraudulent and false story” to sell his memoir, she sued him for unspecified monetary damages and retracted Trump’s defamatory denials of what he said. Demanded to take.
Testifying in April 2023, Carroll told jurors: “I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, they said it didn’t happen. He lied and tarnished my reputation, and I’m here to try to get my life back.
After agreeing to help Trump buy a gift for a woman, Carroll testified that he pushed her against a dressing room wall, stuck his mouth over her mouth, pulled down her panties and used his hand and Then put my penis inside her. Struggled against him.
She said she eventually dropped him to her knees and ran away.
In upholding the $5 million verdict in the first trial, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote that the unanimous verdict was almost entirely in Carroll’s favor, except that the jury concluded that she failed to prove that Trump had raped her “within the narrow, technical sense”. Of a particular section of the New York penal law.
with post wires
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