Brian Stelter: ‘This Might Have Been a Case Where ABC Is Avoiding Public Embarrassment by Paying $15 Million’

ACOSTA: “ABC News will pay millions of dollars to settle a defamation suit with Donald Trump. It all stems from George Stephanopoulos using the word rape instead of sexual abuse in an interview about E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit against Trump in which that was discussed. Under the terms of the settlement, the network will issue a public apology, pay $1 million for Trump’s attorney’s fees, and pony up $15 million for a, quote, ‘presidential foundation and museum.’ CNN’s Brian Stelter joins me now. Brian, this — I mean, this is pretty unusual and disturbing. What do you make of all this and this ugly legal fight that is trying to be avoided by ABC and Disney?”
STELTER: “Right. Trump has a long history of filing lawsuits, including against news outlets. Most of the time, those cases get thrown out. Judges see right through those frivolous cases and throw them out. Trump right now has litigation pending against CBS, for example, over a ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Kamala Harris. So —”
ACOSTA: “Right.”
STELTER: “— these cases oftentimes do not work out for Trump. But this ABC case is a major victory. I talked to renowned First Amendment Lawyer Floyd Abrams last night. He said, look, there’s no way to say other than this is a big win for Trump. It’s going to embolden him to file more of these suits. But as Abrams said, he called it disturbing that this could turn, $15 million could be paid around the use of the word rape versus sexual abuse in that interview on ABC’s this week. Look, Stephanopoulos has been a Trump target for a long time. He was very aggressive in this interview that aired in March. So Trump decided to file suit about a week later. And a judge did not throw it out. A judge let it go forward through the discovery process. So it’s possible that ABC decided to settle this, Jim, because there might have been embarrassing emails or text messages on ABC’s servers that were going to become public. Everybody remembers that’s what happened to Fox News when Dominion sued Fox. So this might have been a case where ABC is avoiding public embarrassment by paying $15 million. But look, there’s a lot of people that say that payment is embarrassing as well. So this is not the end of the story.”