ABC News Pays Future President $15 Million To Settle Defamation Suit Over Statement Federal Judge Had Already Affirmed Was Substantially True

The Filing

NEW YORK. The Walt Disney Company announced Saturday that its ABC News division had agreed to pay $15 million to Donald J. Trump's future presidential library, plus approximately $1 million in legal fees, to settle a defamation suit Mr. Trump filed in March 2024 over remarks made on the air by ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos, an arrangement reached approximately five weeks after Mr. Trump won the presidency and approximately six weeks before he was set to take the oath of office.

The lawsuit had centered on a March 10, 2024 segment of "This Week," in which Mr. Stephanopoulos, interviewing Republican Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, said on multiple occasions that Mr. Trump had been "found liable for rape" by a federal jury, a characterization that hewed closely to written remarks issued previously by United States District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, the presiding judge in the underlying civil case. Judge Kaplan had stated in a July 2023 written opinion that although the jury in the E. Jean Carroll matter had technically concluded Mr. Trump committed "sexual abuse" rather than "rape" under New York's narrowly defined criminal statute, the jury's factual findings established conduct that "in common modern parlance" met the broader definition of the word.

ABC News, which would have proceeded to a trial in which its principal defense was expected to consist of reading Judge Kaplan's previously published clarifications aloud, instead opted to publish a statement of regret on its website, deposit $15 million into a Trump-controlled charitable vehicle, cover Mr. Trump's legal fees, and conclude the matter prior to the inauguration of an administration whose Federal Communications Commission would soon be empowered to scrutinize broadcast licenses held by ABC's corporate parent. "It made business sense to bring this to a close," said one Disney executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, who declined to specify which sense of the word "business" was currently operating.

The settlement, which legal observers across the political spectrum described as one of the most generous recoveries ever obtained in an American defamation case in which the underlying statement had been found by a federal judge to be substantially accurate, established a template that media counsel at every major American broadcaster began studying within hours. Several subsequent suits filed by Mr. Trump against other corporate media defendants, including against CBS over a "60 Minutes" interview edit and against the Des Moines Register and its veteran pollster Ann Selzer over an unfavorable pre-election poll, were widely understood within the industry to be benchmarked against the ABC figure.

Mr. Trump, who had publicly characterized the suit during the campaign as a matter of personal honor, accepted the settlement and the accompanying regret statement and pivoted to a separate phase of his post-election preparations, including the assembly of a Cabinet several of whose nominees had themselves been subject to defamation suits which they were not positioned to win. The President-elect's spokeswoman noted that the settlement proceeds would help fund a presidential library expected to include exhibits both on Mr. Trump's two impeachments and on his historic legal vindications, displayed in adjacent halls.

At press time, the heads of several other major American broadcast networks were comparing notes on which of Mr. Trump's pending lawsuits had the lowest filing fees.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump personally, who received $15 million for his future library, $1 million in legal fees, and a published statement of regret from a major American news network over a statement his own underlying conduct had substantially produced.
§The Trump Presidential Library Foundation, which acquired a $15 million capital infusion and a working template for soliciting additional contributions from media corporations operating in the United States.
§Brendan Carr, Mr. Trump's incoming Federal Communications Commission chairman, whose subsequent investigations into the same networks gained immediate leverage from the demonstrated willingness of corporate parents to pay rather than litigate.
§The Walt Disney Company, which calculated that $15 million represented an acceptable cost to retain regulatory goodwill across broadcast properties whose licenses are subject to federal review, and whose theme parks, animation studios, and ESPN division collectively dwarf the eight-figure settlement in market terms.
§Future presidential plaintiffs of any party, who acquired a precedent demonstrating that frivolous defamation claims against the press can be made profitable if filed by a candidate likely to win.
§Defamation attorneys retained by plaintiffs with regulatory leverage over their defendants, whose billing rates received an immediate uplift across the corporate media defense bar.
§The Heritage Foundation and allied conservative legal organizations, whose long-standing interest in weakening New York Times v. Sullivan received a real-world demonstration of how strategic litigation could chill press behavior without overturning the underlying precedent.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment