Here we go again with our legacy media in the US capitulating in advance to Trump:
ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million toward Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.
ABC will also post a note on its website expressing regret over the claim in a March 10 segment on “This Week,” according to a settlement document made public on Saturday.
Here's more from CNN:
ABC News will pay $15 million to a “presidential foundation and museum” in a settlement reached with President-elect Donald Trump in his defamation suit against the network and anchor George Stephanopoulos.
The settlement, which was filed publicly Saturday, reveals the network will also pay $1 million in Trump’s attorneys’ fees and will issue an apology.
ABC News will issue the following statement as an editor’s note on the online article at the center of the suit: “ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements regarding President Donald J. Trump made during an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 2024.”
“We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing,” an ABC News spokesperson wrote in a statement.
Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns & Money summed things up nicely with the title and first line of their post on the settlement: ABC pays sex assaulter $15 million for saying jury found he had raped woman, as opposed to sexually assaulting her:
That’s slicing the libel bologna extraordinarily thin, but on the other hand if you think of it as protection money it all makes sense. Except it won’t actually buy much if any protection. Just like in the other made for TV rackets.
MSNBC's Ayman Mohyeldin spoke to Barbara McQuade and Harry Litman about the settlement right after the news broke on Saturday evening, and both of the guests takes were correct on what this means with capitulating to Trump, and the fact that ABC would have easily won this case had they gone to court.
Not mentioned during their conversation in the video above... the debacle over at Morning Joe and the fact that they did the same thing running down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump's butt.
Editor’s note: Never forget that Trump was indeed found to have raped E. Jean Carroll, as this article explains. This settlement was a bow and prayer for access and a bribe to back it up.
Update (Karoli): Watch the first 15 minutes or so of the Meidas Touch Legal AF podcast below. I have never seen Ben Meiselas, a lawyer, as angry as he is here and for good reason.
And here is Marc Elias, also furious:
