Former President Donald Trump has sued ABC News and commentator George Stephanopoulos for defamation because of rape allegations Stephanopoulos made in a recent interview with Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina.
Trump filed the lawsuit Monday in federal court in Miami, according to Law.com.
Stephanopoulos confronted Mace during a March 10 interview on “This Week,” asking how she — a rape victim when a teenager — could endorse the former president when “judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape.”
The Republican congresswoman pushed back, saying Stephanopoulos was attempting to shame a rape victim — herself.
The rape reference was to a 2023 civil case in which writer E. Jean Carroll won a multimillion-dollar judgment against Trump for sexually abusing her in 1996 and defaming her.
Contrary to what Stephanopoulos said, federal Judge Lewis A. Kaplan told the jury members they could find Trump liable for rape, but they declined.
A later memorandum by Kaplan said while technically not being rape under New York law, evidence in the trial showed claims of sexual abuse by Trump had violated the common and other legal definitions of rape.
But Trump “was never found liable for rape,” according to a member of his Miami legal team, Alejandro “Alex” Brito, Law.com reported.
Should Trump win his lawsuit?
Being accused on Stephanopoulos’ program of being involved in rape “is, from our estimation, a clear defamatory statement,” Brito said.
“We reached out to ABC and ABC News on Sunday immediately following the news reporting and asked for an apology and a retraction,” the attorney said.
“And rather than acknowledge that Stephanopoulos crossed the line and made a mistake and provide us with such a retraction, all ABC did was change the headline of a print of this story,” he said.
Brito said he intends to use a separate Stephanopoulos interview conducted with Carroll after the trial.
In that interview, the ABC News anchor asked her, “How about yesterday in the courtroom? The first announcement was made, and it was that he was not found liable for rape. What were you thinking at that moment?”
Stephanopoulos did not use the term inadvertently, Brito said, arguing he “knows the facts, yet he chooses to ignore the facts.”
“He said it 10 times in a 10-minute interview and was reading from notes when he asked these questions,” the attorney said.
Carroll won $5 million in the sexual assault judgment. In January, Trump was directed to pay her $83.3 million for defamation.
