Defamation

Jacob Sullum | 12.16.2024 5:35 PM

In an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R–S.C.) on ABC's This Week last March, host George Stephanopoulos repeatedly and inaccurately asserted that Donald Trump, now the president-elect, had been "found liable for rape." A week later, Trump sued ABC and Stephanopoulos for defamation in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, noting that a jury had deemed Trump civilly liable for "sexual abuse," not "rape." Over the weekend, ABC News announced that it had reached a $15 million settlement with Trump in the form of a contribution to Trump's presidential library. ABC also agreed to cover $1 million in Trump's legal expenses.

The settlement is highly unusual in the annals of Trump's many lawsuits against news outlets, which typically feature claims with a much weaker legal and empirical basis. Some Trump critics explicitly or implicitly faulted ABC for folding, saying its decision is apt to have a chilling impact on journalism. But any such threat can be mitigated by applying normal standards of journalistic care—standards that Stephanopoulos conspicuously failed to uphold in this case.

In his interview with Mace, Stephanopoulos was talking about two cases involving the journalist E. Jean Carroll's allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. In one case, a New York jury last year concluded that Carroll had proven, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Trump had "sexually abused" her. The jurors also agreed that Trump had defamed Carroll by calling her a liar and awarded her $5 million in damages. But they expressly concluded that Carroll had failed to prove Trump had "raped" her.

What's the difference? At the time of the verdict against Trump, New York defined "sexual abuse" as "sexual contact…by forcible compulsion." A rape charge, by contrast, required "sexual intercourse," which was limited to "vaginal penetration by a penis." A bill that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law last January broadened the definition of "rape"........

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