George Stephanopolous, Groomer Network ABC Forced to Pay Combined $15 Million to Trump Over "Rape" Lie

Why settle?

First, it was a defamatory lie that would be determined as such by a jury. Stephanopolous claimed Trump had been found "liable for rape" -- it wasn't rape, it was a civil tort for alleged sexual contact (which no one believes happened, including the jury who rendered this partisan verdict). Stephanopolous insisted it was "for rape" even over Nancy Mace's objection, showing he hadn't misspoken -- he was just doubling down on the lie.

Second -- they were just about to sit down for depositions, and the lying propaganda press can't answer questions under oath without either giving their true natures away or criminally perjuring themselves.

As first reported by Fox News Digital, ABC News and President-elect Donald Trump reached a $15 million settlement on Saturday after This Week host George Stephanopoulos falsely accused Trump of being found "liable for rape" in the E. Jean Carroll case.

The incident in question occurred on March 10 when Stephanopoulos was interviewing GOP Rep. Nancy Mace and asked, "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. How do you square your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony we just saw?"

After Mace, a rape survivor herself, accused Stephanopoulos of trying to rape shame her, Stephanopoulos doubled down, "Donald Trump has been found liable for rape by a jury. Donald Trump has been found liable for defaming the victim of that rape by a jury. It's been affirmed by a judge."

Now, ABC will have to donate $15 million to the future Trump Presidential Library and add an editor's note to the March 10 article that reads, "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."

I saw it reported that Stephanopolous himself will pay $1 million of his own money.

The move comes as Trump and Stephanopoulos were ordered to sit down for four-hour depositions next week.

Stephanopolous is refusing to personally apologize, unfortunately. I hate that this was settled without requiring him to admit he lied.

All the other liars in the Marxist propaganda media are angry at ABC News. They're demanding that their fellow "journalists" not just lie, but maintain the lie in the face of defamation lawsuits.

Videos of that below the fold.

CNN, meanwhile, is accused of hiding relevant documents about their finances, which are important for determining the size of punitive damages in the defamation lawsuit against them. The suit concerns Jake Tapper's and his fellow CNN propagandists branding a man helping Afghans flee Afghanistan as a black marketeer and human trafficker.

CNN Accused of Misleading Court on Discloser of Financial Documents in Defamation Suit

Nicholas Fondacaro

As NewsBusters previously reported back in September, Judge William Scott Henry ordered CNN to comply with financial discovery in the $1 billion defamation suit against them and turn over documents related to net worth and cash flow, among others. The order was further supported in October when he cleared the way for CNN's parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) to be subpoenaed for corroborating documents.

But despite CNN's promises to the court that those documents would be turned over, nothing of the sort has been provided; with CNN and WBD saying they don't exist. In a Friday filings exclusively obtained by NewsBusters, U.S. Navy veteran and Plaintiff Zachary Young has now accused CNN of knowingly misleading the court on the existence of the documents and the ability to comply.

And what he's now asking for could take a chunk out of Warner Bros. Discovery.

In a hearing in September, Judge Henry seemed under the impression that WBD would have access to a detailed breakdown of CNN's finances. "So, I mean, if CNN did internal modeling or predictions and set that within the umbrella for Warner Brothers and Warner Brothers happens to have a copy of it. I think Warner Brothers can produce it," he said.

In the October hearing, Judge Henry told CNN what their corporate representatives should be prepared to hand over and talk about in deposition:

The Corporative Representative shall be prepared to answer questions relating to CNN, Inc.'s relationship to any parent or subsidiary company and how those relationships impact the financial resources of CNN, Inc. and CNN Worldwide. But, the Corporate Representative is not otherwise required to answer questions relating to the financial resources of any parent or subsidiary of CNN, Inc. to the extent it does not concern monetary streams into or out of CNN, Inc. or CNN Worldwide within the corporate structure.

And yet, according to the filing exclusively obtained by NewsBusters, the documents one would expect to contain CNN's own financial information don't exist.

...

"Not only did CNN and WBD fail to provide any of this promised documents identifying assets and liabilities, but CNN's representative also failed to supply an information about the net worth number CNN provided (but disclaimed) in its interrogatory response," Freedman added.

Because of this, Young and his team were accusing CNN of misleading the court and wanted action taken against taken against them for the "discovery abuses."

First, Young was requesting that in substitution of CNN's own finances, "The Court should enter an order requiring WBD's financial statements be used to determine CNN's ability to pay, or, at a minimum, giving the jury the option to rely on them."

This comes into play heavily with the punitive damages Judge Henry had already approved of as an option if a jury found CNN liable.

Ed Morrissey reports on the NYT shrieking about all these dangerous defamation lawsuits forcing media companies to either tell the truth or pay a judgment.

Can you believe it? The law of defamation might apply to media companies?

The NYT:

The small flurry of threatened defamation lawsuits is the latest sign that the incoming Trump administration appears poised to do what it can to crack down on unfavorable media coverage. Before and after the election, Mr. Trump and his allies have discussed subpoenaing news organizations, prosecuting journalists and their sources, revoking networks' broadcast licenses and eliminating funding for public radio and television.

Actual or threatened libel lawsuits are another weapon at their disposal -- and they are being deployed even before Mr. Trump moves back into the White House.

It is notoriously difficult for public figures like Mr. Trump to win defamation lawsuits. Under longstanding Supreme Court precedent -- which Mr. Trump and some of his allies want to see weakened or overturned -- plaintiffs must prove that a publisher knew a defamatory statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for its accuracy.

But that high bar has not stopped a wide range of politicians, business leaders and others from threatening or filing such suits -- a strategy that often seems tailored to cause news outlets and individuals to rein in aggressive coverage of the public figures.

What does the Exalted Priesthood of Perfect Truth-Tellers have to fear from defamation lawsuits? Everything you say is 100% fact-checked and 100% accurate.

Or do you lie sometimes?

Morrissey points out that Clarence Thomas has long called for the Court to overturn the Sullivan decision, which permits media companies to lie about their targets unless their target can demonstrate a wilful disregard of the truth.

In a decision, Gorsuch also questioned the incentives created by effectively making media companies 100% immune to defamation lawsuit -- especially when they can make a lot of money by lying.

But over time the actual malice standard has evolved from a high bar to recovery into an effective immunity from liability. Statistics show that the number of defamation trials involving publications has declined dramatically over the past few decades: In the 1980s there were on average 27 per year; in 2018 there were 3. For those rare plaintiffs able to secure a favorable jury verdict, nearly one out of five today will have their awards eliminated in post-trial motions practice. And any verdict that manages to make it past all that is still likely to be reversed on appeal. Perhaps in part because this Court's jurisprudence has been understood to invite appellate courts to engage in the unusual practice of revisiting a jury's factual determinations de novo, it appears just 1 of every 10 jury awards now survives appeal.

"De novo" review is an appeals review in which they show no deference whatsoever to the previous jury verdict. What Gorsuch is complaining about is that even in the few defamation cases that reach a jury decision, and the jury rules against the leftwing propaganda media, appeals courts routinely toss out their verdicts.

The media has a huge number of ways to win. But defamed citizens must draw to an impossible inside straight to win.

The bottom line? It seems that publishing without investigation, fact-checking, or editing has become the optimal legal strategy. Under the actual malice regime as it has evolved, "ignorance is bliss."

That is, the incentives are for media to not fact-check themselves, because they can defeat a defamation lawsuit by saying, basically, "We didn't ignore the truth, because we didn't even look into what the truth was. No malice!"

Combine this legal incentive with the business incentives fostered by our new media world and the deck seems stacked against those with traditional (and expensive) journalistic standards--and in favor of those who can disseminate the most sensational information as efficiently as possible without any particular concern for truth. What started in 1964 with a decision to tolerate the occasional falsehood to ensure robust reporting by a comparative handful of print and broadcast outlets has evolved into an ironclad subsidy for the publication of falsehoods by means and on a scale previously unimaginable.

Noah Blum commented, "Find someone who loves you the way these people love the idea of other people resigning their jobs in political protest."

Obviously everyone, from citizen to Commander-in-Chief, should sue the media any time they lie. They must be exposed as the chief disinformation-spreaders in the world. And they must be bankrupted more quickly than natural market choices would otherwise bankrupt them.

posted by Ace at 05:18 PM

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