Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance was among a chorus of legal experts and other critics who denounced ABC News’ decision to settle a defamation lawsuit with Donald Trump for $15 million.
As part of the settlement made public on Saturday, ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to Trump’s presidential library and $1 million toward Trump’s legal fees. It also issued an editor’s note expressing regret about anchor George Stephanopoulos’ comments during a March 10 interview on “This Week.”
Stephanopoulos had asserted during that interview, with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), that Trump was “found liable for rape.” In May 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing, but not raping, writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s. Trump sued for defamation over Stephanopoulos’ use of the term “rape.”
“This is so far from normal that it is difficult to process,” Vance wrote in her “Civil Discourse” newsletter.
“Many people, myself included, viewed the lawsuit as questionable when it was filed and a settlement, especially one this early in the proceedings and of this magnitude, unlikely,” she continued.
Trump’s case was based around a distinction in legal language. New York state law defines “rape” as nonconsensual vaginal penetration by a penis. Trump was found to have assaulted Carroll with his fingers in a department store dressing room. He is appealing the verdict and denies all wrongdoing.
The judge who oversaw the case, Lewis A. Kaplan, said in a filing last year that the definition of rape is narrow in New York, but the jury’s finding “implicitly determined that [Trump] forcibly penetrated [Carroll] digitally.”
“In other words, [Trump] in fact did ‘rape’ Ms. Carroll as that term commonly is used and understood in contexts outside of the New York Penal Law,” Kaplan wrote.
In order for Trump to have won his defamation case against ABC News, Vance argued, the president-elect “would have had to establish at trial both that the statement was false and that it was made with reckless disregard for its truth or falsity, the ‘actual malice’ standard for defamation cases.”
“So why settle the case?” she asked. “And why settle now, before the depositions of both Trump and Stephanopoulos, scheduled for next week, took place?”
She questioned the timing of the settlement, which she said occurred “before the evidence is even on the table.”
“That suggests something else is going on here, and it’s deeply concerning if that something is that ABC, a major news organization, has decided to curry favor with the incoming president instead of sticking to its guns,” she wrote.
Vance was not alone in her criticism.
Democratic attorney Marc E. Elias accused ABC News of acquiescing to “Kiss the ring. Bend the knee. Obey in advance.”
Human rights attorney Qasim Rashid called it an act of cowardice.
Attorney and SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah argued that ABC News would have won the case, but they capitulated and “settled out of fear.”
ABC News and Trump’s transition team did not immediately return HuffPost’s requests for comment.