The ridiculous E Jean Carroll case has come around to bite George Stephanopoulos and ABC News in the ass. They are paying Trump’s legal fees (one million dollars) and settling out of court for fifteen million.
Stephanopoulos and ABC News will issue statements of “regret” as an editor’s note at the bottom of a March 10, 2024, online article, about comments made earlier this year that prompted Trump to file a defamation lawsuit.
What comments?
After playing a clip of Mace discussing being a victim of rape, Stephanopoulos asked her, “How do you square your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony we just saw?”
“You’ve endorsed Donald Trump for president. Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape,” Stephanopoulos said, alluding to the legal victory by Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll.
Stephanopoulos repeated that claim ten times during his spat with Mace, despite the fact that a jury actually determined Trump was liable for “sexual abuse,” which has a distinct definition under New York law.
I guess George felt pretty good about the narrative if he repeated it ten times and then this.
The short version is that, within 24 hours after a federal judge ordered ABC’s anchor George Stephanopoulos to sit for deposition and answer questions under oath, and just over a month after Trump’s landslide re-election, after four hours of mediation, ABC threw in the settlement towel and agreed to cough up $15 million dollars in damages plus $1 million in attorney’s fees. ABC also published a weasely “statement of regret,” the wording of which I bet was much more contentious during mediation than was the money.
Fear appears to be the most likely motivator, which is something ABC News knows a lot about. Peddling it, at least.
Donald Trump is also suing CNN for 475 million.
Trump, a Republican, claims in the 29-page lawsuit that CNN had a long track record of criticizing him but had ramped up its attacks in recent months because the network feared that he would run again for president in 2024.
“As a part of its concerted effort to tilt the political balance to the left, CNN has tried to taint the Plaintiff with a series of ever-more scandalous, false, and defamat
He is suing the DoJ (soon to be his DoJ) for 100 Million over the unconstitutional harassment ala the Mar-a-Lago Raid.
He is suing CBS News and 60-Minutes for 10 billion over the election interfering manipulative editing of its interview with Kamala Harris.
There may be more, and I’m not a fan of all the lawsuits, but there are easily dozens more he could likely file over statements made with obvious intent of malice well beyond the standard of free press or free speech protections. As our readers are all well aware, TDS made people forget that you can say a lot about a public figure, but there is still a line.
Mr. Trump is not likely to win them all, but much the way some use the government and lawfare to intimidate and make examples, The Donald is playing their game, and ABC News lost. It’s not a big loss, but it has to kill them to give that much money to a guy they obviously hate and publicly apologize unless their narcissistic psychopathy so captures them that it’s just the price of doing business.
