According to the settlement, ABC News will also pay $1 million in legal fees to Mr Trump’s lawyer.
American Broadcasting Company News has agreed to pay $15 million toward Donald Trump’s presidential library as a way of settling a lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate assertion that the president-elect had been found liable for raping writer Jean Carroll.
In a settlement signed in the Southern District of Florida Federal Court on Saturday, ABC News is also expected to post a note on its website expressing regret over the claim in a segment on Mr Stephanopoulos’ ‘This Week’ programme, which forced Mr Trump to file the defamation suit.
According to the settlement, ABC News will also pay $1 million in legal fees to Mr Trump’s lawyer.
“We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing,” ABC News said in a statement.
Mr Trump sued Mr Stephanopoulos and ABC News for defamation shortly after the anchor claimed during an interview with Nancy Mace that Mr Trump had been “found liable for rape,” which mispresented the verdicts in Ms Carroll’s two lawsuits against him.
The president-elect was in the lawsuit represented by Florida attorneys Alejandro Brito and Richard Klugh, who also represent Mr Trump in his legal case against CNN.
Last year, Mr Trump was found liable for sexually assaulting and defaming Ms Carroll and was ordered to pay her $5 million. In January, he was also found liable on additional defamation claims and ordered to pay Ms Carroll $83.3 million.
However, Mr Trump is appealing both judgments.
Lewis Kaplan, the presiding judge in both instances, said the jury’s conclusion was that Ms Carroll had failed to prove that Ms Trump raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law.”
Mr Kaplan further noted that the definition of rape was “far narrower” than how rape is defined in common modern parlance, adding the judgment did not mean that Ms Carroll “failed to prove that Mr Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape’.
