CNN
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Former President Donald Trump filed one more lawsuit in opposition to the information media late Monday, accusing ABC Information and George Stephanopoulos of defamation over assertions the anchor made in a combative interview.
In an interview on “This Week,” Stephanopoulos pressed Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, a rape survivor, over her continued assist of Trump after a jury discovered he sexually abused author E. Jean Carroll in 1996, awarding her $88 million for battery and defamation. Stephanopoulos asserted a number of occasions within the interview with Mace that Trump had “raped” Carroll.
“You endorsed Donald Trump for president. Judges and two separate juries have discovered him chargeable for rape and for defaming the sufferer of that rape. How do you sq. your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony that we simply noticed?” Stephanopoulos requested Mace.
The South Carolina Republican defended her assist of the previous president, arguing that the jury determination was merely in a civil case. “It was not a legal courtroom case, primary,” she instructed Stephanopoulos. “Quantity two, I dwell with disgrace. And also you’re asking me a query about my political selections making an attempt to disgrace me as a rape sufferer.”
Whereas a Manhattan federal jury last year found that Trump had sexually abused Carroll, ample to carry him chargeable for battery, the jury didn’t discover that she proved he had raped her. Dismissing a countersuit months later, nonetheless, the decide within the case concluded that the claim Trump raped Carroll was “considerably true.”
“Certainly, the jury’s verdict in Carroll II establishes, as in opposition to Mr Trump, the truth that Mr Trump ‘raped her’, albeit digitally quite than along with his penis. Thus, it establishes in opposition to him the substantial reality of Ms Carroll’s ‘rape’ accusations,” Decide Lewis Kaplan wrote.
Trump’s lawsuit, which was filed in federal courtroom within the Southern District of Florida, claims that Stephanopoulos’s statements had been “false, intentional, malicious and designed to trigger hurt.”
A consultant for ABC Information didn’t present a right away remark.
However Trump, who usually demonizes the press, has a protracted historical past of submitting meritless lawsuits in opposition to the information media. He was not too long ago forced to pay $392,000 in lawyer charges to The New York Occasions for a failed lawsuit in opposition to the newspaper.