ABC recently agreed to pay $15 million to resolve a defamation suit brought by Donald Trump, prompting one legal expert to raise a red flag.
Joyce Vance, a former federal prosecutor and legal analyst, weighed in on Sunday about what she called the "surprise Saturday night move" by ABC and anchor George Stephanopoulos.
"They agreed to put $15 million in escrow towards a fund for a future Trump library or foundation and $1 million towards his legal fees in exchange for Trump dismissing the case. The network is also adding a note to the bottom of articles about the allegedly defamatory on air comments the anchor made," Vance wrote in her blog on Substack.
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That result, according to Vance, "is so far from normal that it is difficult to process."
"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. It followed a jury’s decision in favor of E. Jean Carroll after she sued Trump for defamation when he claimed she was lying about him sexually assaulting her in a department store decades earlier, Stephanopolous said that Trump had been found civilly liable for raping her," Vance wrote before adding that, in order to win the case, Trump "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."
She then continues:
"So why settle the case? And why settle now, before the depositions of both Trump and Stephanopoulos, scheduled for next week, took place? A settlement on the eve of trial is one thing. A settlement before the evidence is even on the table, and one for such a large amount, three times the verdict against Trump in the first of the two Carroll cases, doesn’t make a lot of sense from a strictly legal perspective."
She concludes, "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."