Donald Trump has sued ABC News and host George Stephanopoulos for falsely claiming that Trump was found liable for rape by a court and jury:
Former President Donald Trump has filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC News and George Stephanopoulos, claiming his reputation was tarnished by the anchor saying multiple times on-air that Trump had been found liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.
Trump filed the lawsuit in federal court in Miami on Monday over a viral interview between US Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Stephanopoulos on “This Week” on March 10, according to The Hill.
The suit takes aim at Stephanopoulos’ questioning for saying Trump had been found “liable for rape” when a jury in a Manhattan civil case last year only found Trump liable for sexual abuse under New York law.
As I understand it, the jury specifically found that Trump did not rape Carroll. Her claim to that effect–that Trump pulled her into a changing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store, decades ago, and raped her a few feet away from where hundreds of people were passing by–was incredible, and the jury didn’t buy it. So what Stephanopoulos said was plainly false.
The conventional wisdom is that a political figure can’t win a defamation case because the legal standard of actual malice is too high. On the other hand, a District of Columbia jury that was thoroughly imbued with global warming hysteria found Mark Steyn liable for defaming Michael Mann, even though there was zero evidence that Steyn didn’t believe that what he said about Mann–the “hockey stick” graph was fraudulent–was true.
Does America have a two-tier system of justice, with one set of rules for Democrats and another for Republicans? It certainly seems so. On the other hand, Trump brought this case in Miami. Perhaps there he will find a judge who applies the law in neutral fashion, and a jury that is not hopelessly biased against him. I hope so.
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