A Florida judge has allowed a trial to move forward in the defamation lawsuit of former President Donald Trump vs. ABC News. In March, Trump filed a lawsuit accusing one of the new organization’s most well-known journalists, George Stephanopoulos, of defaming him in a heated segment on his show “This Week” with Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C.
Chief U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga decided to proceed with the case, refusing ABC News’ July 24 request to dismiss it completely. Both sides in the lawsuit have requested a jury trial.
“New York has opted to separate out a crime of rape. Stephanopoulos’s statements dealt not with the public’s usage of that term, but the jury’s consideration of it during a formal legal proceeding,” Altonaga said, per CNN. “adding that this case would turn on ‘whether it is substantially true to say a jury (or juries) found (Trump) liable for rape by a jury despite the jury’s verdict expressly finding he was not liable for rape.’”
“Judge Kaplan was reviewing a jury’s damages award. His analysis necessarily focused on what Carroll had and had not proved at trial, as well as the harm Carroll experienced from (Trump’s) abuse. There was no discussion of how to accurately report on the jury’s findings,” she added.
Following Altonaga’s decision, Trump posted to Truth Social claiming victory in the Florida court.
Regarding the Florida Judge’s decision not to dismiss the case, attorney Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., who has worked on defamation cases, told The New York Times, “This is a very troubling and incorrect application of defamation law that clashes with basic First Amendment principles and that will chill reporting on legal proceedings and issues of great public interest and concern.”
What did Stephanopoulos say in the interview?
In the interview that aired on March 10, Stephanopoulos mentioned that Trump had been found “liable for rape” multiple times regarding the Republican presidential candidate’s defamation lawsuit with writer E. Jean Carroll. The verdict actually found him liable for sexually abusing her, not technically rape under New York state law.
Judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversaw the trial, later clarified following Trump’s guilty verdict in the civil trial that took place in May 2023 that “The only point on which Ms. Carroll did not prevail was whether she had proved that Mr. Trump had ‘raped’ her within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law,” but did add that it was “substantially true.”
Stephanopoulos asked Mace, a victim of rape herself, in the interview how she could endorse Trump after “judges in two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape.”
Jurors did not find Trump liable for rape, which was Carroll’s biggest accusation against him. Mace said in her response that she found his question to be “disgusting” and that she was “not going to sit here on your show and be asked a question meant to shame me about another potential rape victim,” Mace added. “I’m not going to do that.”
In January, a jury forced Trump to pay $83.3 million in damages to Carroll, giving her eight times what she had initially asked for. Trump has since demanded a retrial.