ABC's Decision to Settle with Trump Came from the Very Top, And It's Causing Internal Problems: Report
Senior leadership at Disney moved to settle the lawsuit President-elect Donald Trump filed against ABC News, provoking an internal controversy at the entertainment conglomerate.
Disney CEO Bob Iger greenlit the decision to pay $15 million for Trump’s future presidential library to resolve claims concerning ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos, according to a Wednesday report from The Wall Street Journal.
But the move, which also committed the company to paying $1 million in attorney fees for Trump, caused frustration from rank-and-file journalists and producers, the report said.
Disney leadership decided to settle rather than face an uphill court battle in the state of Florida, people familiar with the settlement told the Journal.
They were concerned that the case could have “ultimately proven costly not only to the company, but to press freedom writ large,” the outlet wrote.
Lawyers at the company were wary of the present composition of the Supreme Court, which could overturn New York Times v. Sullivan.
The landmark decision currently offers protection to media companies in defamation cases related to public officials.
The settlement was approved by Disney general counsel Horacio Gutierrez.
Attorneys for Trump filed the lawsuit in March after Stephanopoulos repeated several times in an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, that Trump was found civilly liable for raping journalist and author E. Jean Carroll.
But a federal jury said he was liable for sexual abuse, not rape.
Stephanopoulos doubled down on his statements in remarks made to late night host Stephen Colbert, contending that the judge made comments in the case, which allowed for such a characterization.
“I’m not going to be cowed out of doing my job because of the threat,” Stephanopoulos told Colbert in reference to the Trump lawsuit, per the Journal.
Trump announced after the settlement that he would file more lawsuits against other media outlets.
One complaint against the Des Moines Register centers on a poll from the outlet conducted by J. Ann Selzer, which predicted that Trump would lose Iowa to Vice President Kamala Harris by three percentage points, even though he later won the state decisively.
Trump told reporters, “It was fraud, and it was election interference.”
The president-elect plans to sue “60 Minutes,”arguing that they edited an interview with Harris to make her appear more favorable.
He will also sue Pulitzer “because reporters at the New York Times, Washington Post, got Pulitzer Prizes for their wonderful, accurate, and highly professional reporting on the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax.”
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