Why ABC News settled with Donald Trump for $15 million

(CNN) — George Stephanopoulos ended Sunday’s “This Week” program without any mention of him or ABC News settling Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against them. The suit was triggered by a segment on “This Week,” but ABC News has not reported on TV its agreement to pay $15 million to Trump’s presidential foundation at all.

The quiet approach on air is in keeping with the network’s attitude toward the settlement writ large. “This problem needed to go away,” an ABC executive remarked on condition of anonymity.

But the speculation – about why ABC agreed to settle, and why now, and why at such expense – has not gone away.

Judging from social media reactions to the news, partisan know-it-alls on the right think the “why” is obvious: ABC lied about Trump, they say, so now the network is being punished accordingly.

Some Trump critics on the left are also certain that they know what’s going on: They say ABC and parent company Disney are bowing to Trump for craven political purposes.

Ultimately, the reasons for the settlement may remain a secret between the two sides. But media lawyers who spoke with CNN said it is rare to see a settlement at this stage of a legal dispute.

The lawsuit stemmed from a March 10, 2024, ABC segment in which Stephanopoulos repeatedly said that Trump had been “found liable for rape” in the E. Jean Carroll civil case. Trump has denied all wrongdoing toward Carroll, but last year a jury found that Trump sexually abused Carroll, sufficient to hold him liable for battery, though it did not find that Carroll proved he raped her.

Trump filed suit one 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 move forward, which meant the network was subjected to the pre-trial discovery process – a fancy way of saying that the anchorman had his emails and other work materials scrutinized.

Last week, with a trial date on the books for April, the judge said that ABC must hand over any remaining documents to Trump’s legal team right away. She also ordered both Stephanopoulos and Trump to be deposed 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; a court filing on Saturday effectively announced the payout and ABC’s apology, enabling Trump’s allies to publicly celebrate.

Why now?

“Why would they do this now?” is the question Ken Turkel, a trial attorney at Turkel Cuva Barrios, asked a colleague over the weekend. Turkel, who is representing Sarah Palin in her resurrected defamation suit against The New York Times, said he was merely speculating like other observers. But one obvious possibility is that “perhaps they didn’t want to be actively litigating against a sitting president.”

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

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

Turkel also said “you would have to consider” whether the discovery process unearthed emails or other internal ABC data that damaged the network’s case.

That’s what Erick Erickson, who practiced law before becoming a conservative radio host, said he took away.

“No, a $15 million settlement is not the cost of doing business. It is avoiding discovery,” Erickson wrote on X.

The funds have been earmarked to a Trump “presidential foundation and museum” in the future, and one can only imagine how Trump might troll ABC with a “Gallery of Fake News” or something similar.

ABC declined to comment on its reasons for settling.

The president-elect has a long history of litigation, with numerous unsuccessful cases against news outlets in the past. Some media law experts believed ABC had a good chance of beating him at trial, given the inherent challenge of proving Stephanopoulos acted with “actual malice.” But trials also add uncertainty and a risk of severe reputational damage – factors that ABC’s parent company, Disney, is now avoiding.

Renowned First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams told CNN “there is no escaping the reality” that the settlement was a “major victory” for Trump.

“The case undoubtedly posed a genuine level of risk for ABC since George Stephanopoulos had inaccurately summarized the jury verdict as one in which the jury had found Trump liable for rape when it had instead found him liable for ‘sexual abuse’ and not rape,” Abrams said. “But for a person, especially one now about to become our president, held by a jury to have committed an act of sexual abuse to receive an amount of this magnitude in settlement is disturbing.”

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