Tangle - The Trump-ABC News settlement.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today's read: 14 minutes.

Coming this Friday.

In the last couple weeks, I've been accused of being "out of touch" more times than I ever have in my entire life. The criticisms have mostly been for "my take" on the murder of Brian Thompson and then my response to reader feedback on that take. As frustrating as the criticisms have been, I also realized the problem was partially my fault. While I've touched on the topic a lot, I've never written explicitly about class and class politics — or my upbringing — here in Tangle. So on Friday, in a members-only post, I'm going to do just that. 

Quick hits.

1. Congressional leaders released the text of a bill to keep the government funded through mid-March ahead of a Friday deadline to avoid a partial government shutdown. The bill also provides more than $100 billion in relief to disaster victims and farmers. (The bill)
2. New York prosecutors charged Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, with murder as an act of terrorism under a law passed in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. (The charges)
3. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the country will maintain a military presence in newly occupied territory in Syria “until another arrangement is found that guarantees Israel’s security.” (The comments)
4. The Federal Trade Commission announced it has finalized a rule requiring businesses to disclose the total price (including fees) for live event tickets or short-term lodging they offer consumers. (The rule)
5. The House Ethics Committee voted to release its report on its investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). The report is slated to be released on Thursday. (The vote)

Today's topic.

The Trump-ABC News settlement. On Saturday, President-elect Donald Trump settled a defamation lawsuit with ABC News over inaccurate statements made by news host George Stephanopoulos during a segment in March. As part of the settlement, ABC News agreed to pay $15 million as a charitable contribution to a "Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for Plaintiff, as Presidents of the United States of America have established in the past." Additionally, the network will pay $1 million to cover Trump's attorney fees and issued a statement of "regret" as an editor's note at the bottom of an online article from March 10.

ABC News is a subsidiary of Disney, which will be responsible for disbursing the payment.

Back up: During an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) on March 10, Stephanopoulos said that Trump “had been found liable for rape by a jury,” repeating the claim 10 times during the broadcast. The comments referred to a verdict by a New York City jury in May 2023 that found Trump civilly liable for sexually abusing and defaming author E. Jean Carroll. However, the jury found the president-elect not guilty of rape, which New York law distinguished from sexual abuse at the time, instead finding Trump civilly liable of sexual abuse. In May, Trump sued ABC for defamation, accusing Stephanopoulos of “actual malice,” the legal bar that public figures must clear in order to prove defamation. In July, ABC moved to dismiss the case, claiming that the anchor’s statement was “substantially true,” but a U.S. District judge rejected the motion on the grounds that “a reasonable jury could interpret Stephanopoulos's statements as defamatory.” 

The parties agreed to the settlement one day after Magistrate Judge Lisette Reid ordered both Trump and Stephanopoulos to sit for hearings lasting no more than four hours.

ABC’s decision to settle instigated some backlash against the network, while others questioned why the network chose to settle now. 

"We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing," an ABC News spokesperson said in a statement. When asked for his comments, Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung referred to the contents of the filing.

Below, we’ll cover what the left and right are saying about the settlement. Then, I’ll give my take.

What the left is saying.

• The left is critical of ABC’s decision to settle, suggesting they would have likely prevailed in court. 
• Some say the settlement could weaken press freedoms.
• Others counter that the outcome was a reasonable resolution in a case of media inaccuracy. 

In The Washington Post, Erik Wemple called the settlement “a low, low point for ABC News.”

ABC’s “crow-eating statement wasn’t the most gobsmacking aspect of the settlement. That would be the $15 million that ABC News agreed to pay toward a “Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for [Trump]... Meaning: ABC News, a founding member of the mainstream media, will also serve as a founding member of the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library,” Wemple wrote. “And here’s the peculiar dimension of this whole affair: The posture of ABC News progressed from unreasonably dismissive (rejecting legitimate demands for correction) to unreasonably accommodating (giving away the store to Trump via $15 million, a note of contrition and so on).”

“ABC News does its business under the world-class protections of the First Amendment… What’s more, Trump would have had to prove that ABC News acted with knowledge of the false statements or proceeded with reckless disregard of their truth or falsity, per the landmark Supreme Court ruling New York Times v. Sullivan,” Wemple said. “Accompanying the luxury of those protections is the obligation to actually use them. As opposed to bailing on a winnable case from a man with a history of exploiting the civil justice system.”

In The Nation, Chris Lehmann argued “Trump’s attack on the free press is just getting started.”

“Under the standards of libel, Stephanopoulos’s comments clearly were fair game. For public figures such as Trump, a libel action has to prove reckless disregard of the truth or actual malice on the part of a defendant,” Lehmann wrote. “In this case, Stephanopoulos was plainly summarizing the sense of the judge’s own reasoning in the Carroll complaint; a robust defense by ABC would have both vindicated plain-spoken coverage of Trump and his movement and marked a key reversal of the industry-wide swoon into Trump-appeasing prostration. Instead, the network opted to roll over.”

“These quests for payback from a critical press are very much of a piece with Trump-driven efforts to strip out key bulwarks of media independence,” Lehmann said. “It’s not yet clear how far Trump apparatchiks will go in trashing whatever remains of a principled, independent media in the flailing American republic. Yet, regardless of their track record, many of them may be able to add cushy sinecures as ABC commentators to their résumés.”

In Bloomberg, Noah Feldman said ABC’s decision to settle “makes sense.”

“For Trump to win his lawsuit against ABC, he would have had to prove that Stephanopoulos knew or should have known it was false to say that Trump was found liable for rape. Here, things get a bit complicated. Technically, the jury found that Carroll had proved to a preponderance of the evidence that Trump sexually abused her. The jury declined to find that he had raped her under New York law… If Stephanopoulos’ statement is taken as a statement of the jury’s formal finding, it was false,” Feldman wrote. “Then there’s the public-figure-specific element: whether Stephanopoulos knew or should have known the statement was technically false as a matter of New York law.”

“If the libel case had gone to trial, Trump’s lawyers could have pointed to the jury form, on which the jurors checked a box marked ‘no’ in answer to the question of whether Trump was liable for rape. The visual evidence would have been strong and could have led a jury to find against ABC. That’s probably a big part of why ABC settled,” Feldman said. “The main takeaway from all this is that the Sullivan rule worked just fine, from the standpoint of holding the press to account for accuracy… In a complicated case like this, the defendant settled because of the risk of losing. That alone will create incentives for other people to speak carefully about complex legal matters.”

What the right is saying.

• The right approves of the settlement, though some say that ABC’s punishment should have been greater. 
• Many say the outcome was a welcome victory for press accountability.
• Others suggest that ABC is recalibrating in real time to adapt to the new media environment. 

The New York Post editorial board said “Trump let ABC off easy.”

“Make no mistake: President-elect Donald Trump let ABC off easy; it only has to pay $15 million toward his future presidential library, plus $1 million for his lawyers’ fees, to get out of a defamation lawsuit it was sure to lose — and so avoid legal discovery that surely would have finished off whatever reputation its new division still has,” the board wrote. “The law gives even public figures some rights against such smears; if the case had proceeded, Trump’s legal team would’ve been able to access ABC News’ internal communications in order to prove the network’s reckless attitude toward the truth.

“Trump was actually quite magnanimous in not making ABC pay him the settlement, even if the deal makes the company by far the largest donor to the Trump library. Inevitably, the usual suspects will twist their hands over this settlement being an ominous sign of the media rolling over for the ‘vindictive’ prez-elect,” the board said. “That’s nonsense: Corporations like ABC and its parent company, Disney, don’t make such payouts unless they think they’re avoiding far worse if the case actually moves ahead.”

In National Review, Jeffrey Blehar wrote “ABC pays the price for George Stephanopoulos’s partisan irresponsibility.”

“I’m completely uninterested in relitigating E. Jean Carroll’s allegations against Trump… As a simple matter of legal fact, however, Stephanopoulos got the nature of the verdict wildly and recklessly wrong, over and over again — aggressively so,” Blehar said. “The Manhattan jury that found Trump liable for an indeterminate sexual offense pointedly stipulated that Carroll didn’t prove rape. That they reached that verdict in a civil trial, where the incredibly permissive ‘preponderance of the evidence’ standard is used (as opposed to the ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ one), is evidence enough how even the least favorable jury imaginable for Donald Trump found Carroll’s claim of rape unpersuasive.”

“I enjoy seeing ABC get what’s coming to it for its arrogance and carelessness, and it couldn’t have involved a more deserving agent of disaster than the odious Stephanopoulos, who will otherwise pay no price professionally for the incident,” Blehar wrote. “I saw one former mainstream media journalist dismiss the $15 million settlement as analogous to ‘Disney avoiding legal costs’ and had to laugh. Big media corporations do not drop that much money, plus attorneys’ fees and a televised apology, merely to avoid costs… Neither side would have enjoyed the discovery process in this case, but ABC had far, far more to lose than Donald Trump.”

In Fox News, Jonathan Turley explored “what ABC's apology to Trump reveals about the media landscape.”

“The settlement came just before ABC and Stephanopoulos were to be called for depositions, as ordered by U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisette M. Reid. That discovery was likely to prove more embarrassing for the network than it would Trump and could have revealed internal messages on the controversy,” Turley said. “The danger is on full display in another courtroom where CNN has been losing critical motions in a defamation case where punitive damages could result. Anchor Jake Tapper and CNN are being sued by Navy veteran Zachary Young after falsely suggesting that he and his organization were exploiting desperate Afghan refugees.”

Additionally, “the settlement occurred after an election in which Trump won the trifecta of the White House, Congress and the popular vote… Disney is trying to adopt a more neutral stance after years of opposition to its stances on political issues and accusations of ultra-woke products,” Turley wrote. “With networks like MSNBC and CNN struggling for their very existence, ABC is intent on having a chair when the music stops. While the ABC settlement may not be an admission of guilt, it is a recognition of the reality after this historic election.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• I think ABC was likely to win this case, which raises the question of why they chose to settle.
• Maybe they wanted to curry favor with Trump, or avoid discovery, or simply not take the risk.
• To me, this wasn’t a story as much about press freedoms as it was about how big corporations manage risk. 

To be candid, when I learned that Trump was suing ABC for George Stephanopoulos’s comments on the E. Jean Carroll case, I basically tuned it out. After all, Trump has brought several defamation lawsuits against media outlets and threatened countless others. With one exception, he’s lost his cases or had them dismissed. He’s also been open about his strategy of threatening to sue to make a point and not for any material gain. 

That’s not to say Stephanopoulos did nothing wrong — more on that in a bit — just that it’s hard to win a defamation or libel case against the media, particularly as a public figure. In 1964, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in New York Times v. Sullivan that a public figure must demonstrate “false or…reckless disregard of the truth” in court to prove they were libeled. Put simply, the court’s test for libel or slander against a public figure requires "clear and convincing" evidence of malicious intent. 

That’s generally a good thing. This legal precedent is part of our country’s robust free speech framework, which allows for appreciable freedoms of public expression that we all enjoy — even if it means gross incompetence can occasionally cause damage with little accountability. 

With that precedent in mind, my suspicion is Trump would have lost in court. Let’s start with the exchange between Stephanopoulos and Rep. Nancy Mace that brought this lawsuit about. The segment begins with a clip of Mace speaking about her experience as a rape survivor, which Stephanopoulos responds to by asking her how she could support Trump after a jury found him “liable for rape.” He says Trump has been found “liable for rape” nine more times, later referencing a Washington Post article about the case, saying, “It has been shown to be rape. The judge affirmed that it was, in fact, rape. Donald Trump was found to have committed rape. That's just a fact.” Mace pushes back somewhat, saying that the judgment was made in civil — not criminal — court, but doesn’t contradict Stephanopoulos’s claim that Trump was found liable for rape. 

Of course, Stephanopoulos was simply wrong. Trump was found to have sexually abused Carroll, but he was not found guilty of rape; in fact, the jury explicitly said Trump did not rape Carroll. And while just being wrong isn’t enough for a libel conviction, Trump’s team had a decent argument for malice: Stephanopoulos had accurately described the verdict in the past, so it was not as though his interview with Mace was only the latest in a string of consistent misunderstandings. Trump’s lawyers used this to argue that Stephanopoulos made the false statements intentionally and maliciously. 

In its motion to dismiss the lawsuit, ABC pointed to a ruling made by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in a separate case, in which he found that Trump had defamed Carroll by calling her a liar after the verdict in the civil trial. Kaplan wrote that “Mr. Trump in fact did ‘rape’ Ms. Carroll as that term commonly is used and understood in contexts outside of the New York Penal Law.” ABC argued that the judge’s finding gave a degree of credence to Stephanopoulos’s comments — enough to show that they weren’t made with the intent to defame the president.

That argument wasn’t enough to dismiss the case pretrial, but looked strong enough to prevail in court. Additional context of the interview only strengthens that argument: Stephanopoulos was displaying the Washington Post article he had been referencing during the segment on screen, with the headline “Judge clarifies: Yes, Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll.” Furthermore, the network could have argued that Stephanopoulos did not have the requisite legal knowledge to differentiate between New York’s definitions of sexual assault and rape (again, Mace herself didn’t even dispute his characterization of the case on air). 

Given how hard it is to win defamation lawsuits, I don’t think Trump’s argument was quite "clear and convincing" enough to prevail in this context. Assuming that ABC News knew this, and that it is not in the business of haphazardly lighting $16 million on fire, begs the question: Why would they choose to settle? 

Many writers on the left have suggested that ABC effectively prostrated itself before Trump to the detriment of the entire profession and press freedoms. I don’t see it that way. I’m more troubled by Stephanopoulos’s disregard for accuracy as a major news host at a time when media credibility is sinking to all-time lows. Watching the clip of Stephanopoulos’s interview with Mace, it’s clear from the jump that his intention is to corner her on the E. Jean Carroll verdict, which led to repeated false statements on a gravely serious issue. The segment was another example of how cable news is broken, and I’m fine with ABC paying a price for that mistake. 

That doesn’t mean I don’t understand the concern. Trump has threatened plenty of actions that could have a chilling effect on press freedoms. He’s said NBC News should be investigated for treason. He’s said CBS should lose their broadcasting license for editing their interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. Just this week, he sued Ann Selzer and The Des Moines Register over Selzer’s pre-election poll that showed Kamala Harris winning Iowa, alleging it amounted to "brazen election interference." I doubt the case will go anywhere, but the fact that Trump felt emboldened enough to sue over an incorrect poll in an election he won handily validates what his critics have said about his second term being focused on vengeance instead of governance. It’s a concern I share. 

But none of that explains the decision to settle. I see three plausible explanations.

First, ABC (or its parent company, Disney) is trying to make nice with Trump before he takes office. Debra OConnell, the Disney executive who directly oversees ABC News, reportedly had dinner with Susie Wiles, Trump’s incoming chief of staff, last week during a visit that also included other ABC News executives and members of Trump’s transition team. We don’t know whether the two discussed the case, but it’s easy to see the meeting itself as part of a broader conciliatory effort. Other outlets have already committed to a similar pivot, and perhaps ABC thought $16 million was the price it had to pay to mend its relationship with the president-elect. 

Second, ABC was worried about what might come out in the discovery process if this case had gone to trial. As Jonathan Turley noted in Fox News (under “What the right is saying”), CNN is currently embroiled in its own defamation case, which has revealed unsavory text messages between the outlet’s journalists talking about how they planned to “nail” the subject of a story about war profiteering in Afghanistan. We saw a similarly damaging process play out when Fox News went to court for lies about Dominion stealing the election. While Trump probably wanted to avoid the discovery process himself, it’s not hard to see why ABC preferred to settle, given the potentially sensitive internal messages that could have been made public — particularly involving a high-profile anchor like Stephanopoulos. 

Finally, it’s always possible I’m wrong and ABC would have actually lost the case. Bloomberg’s Noah Feldman (under “What the left is saying”) makes the most compelling argument that Trump’s team had all the evidence they needed to prove malice on Stephanopoulos’s part. Viewed through this lens, ABC chose to make a prudent and calculated decision, taking a small hit to prevent a potentially devastating one. 

All three of these interpretations make sense to me, but I buy some combination of #1 and #2 as the most likely explanations — with #3 perhaps being a factor in the final dollar amount. Even before Trump won the election, mainstream news outlets signaled that they were reconsidering how to cover him, and I think it’s clear now that many are not interested in a repeat of the combative relationship they had during his first term. Simultaneously, I think ABC had a strong (and well founded) desire not to subject Stephanopoulos and its other staff to an invasive discovery process that could have further damaged the outlet’s credibility. 

Whatever their true rationale, this case is a good reminder that lots of legal decisions are made in the interest of minimizing damage or risk, rather than proving who’s right or wrong. 

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Your questions, answered.

Q: Since the beginning I've had trouble caring about [Trump’s classified documents] case. Why? Because it's pieces of paper in a digital era. Former presidents could literally forward all of this documentation to themselves and no one would ever know, and it could be accessed anywhere. Why do we still care about documents in the digital era?

— David from Jerusalem, Israel

Tangle: For me, it’s less of a “we should care about one and not the other” and more that we should care about both. Absolutely, digital security is a big deal. That’s why Edward Snowden and Julian Assange and even Hillary Clinton’s private email servers were such major news stories in their own rights (and also led to exile and potential prison sentences).

However, security for physical information matters, too. With digital information, a big concern is that one vulnerability can cause a security breach that can spread incredibly far and incredibly fast. With physical information, the concern is that it’s untraceable. Who was able to get into Mar-a-Lago, thumb through one of the boxes that were left there unsecured, and either read some information that they were able to repeat or even take a picture of a document and spread it without us ever being able to tell? There’s no real way to know. It’s also true that hard copy documents can be the original — and perhaps only — pieces of evidence or documentation in some cases.

Not only that, but the security risk Trump demonstrated through his treatment of those classified documents (and to a lesser degree, Joe Biden and Mike Pence — yes, those cases are very different) could materially hurt the way our allies share information with us. That’s not hyperbole, either — it’s happened before, and it could easily happen again.

So, while I agree that in today’s age the security of digital data is more important than securing physical information, I believe that controlling access to that physical information is still an important matter of national security.

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

The Biden administration is updating the application process for an H-1B visa, which allows U.S. employers to bring on highly skilled or specialized workers from other countries. The number of available H-1B visas is capped at 65,000 each year, but certain organizations are exempt from that limit; the new rule clarifies that nonprofit and governmental organizations whose “fundamental activity” is research are not subject to the cap. Additionally, foreign nationals transitioning from a student visa to an H-1B will be granted a one-year postgraduation work permit while their H-1B petition is heard to prevent gaps in employment. Broadly, the rule aims to streamline the H-1B process while addressing areas of the program that are vulnerable to abuse. The Hill has the story.

Numbers.

• 7. The number of times Donald Trump has been a plaintiff in a defamation case. 
• 7. The number of times Trump has been a defendant in a defamation case. 
• 1. The number of defamation cases that Trump won. 
• 3. The number of defamation cases that Trump lost (all as a plaintiff). 
• 3. The number of defamation cases that were settled before trial. 
• 1,871. The total number of federal media libel complaints between 1970 and 2020, according to a 2022 paper from the Media Law Resource Center. 
• 78. The total number of libel complaints filed against television news companies between 2011 and 2021. 
• 21%. The percentage of those complaints that were brought by a public figure.

The extras.

• One year ago today we covered Republicans authorizing Biden’s impeachment inquiry.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the school shooting in Madison, WI.
• Nothing to do with politics: A 106-year-old Ohio woman credits her longevity to positivity and drinking Fireball. 
• Yesterday’s survey: 2,350 readers responded to our survey on Biden’s mass clemency with 60% opposed or fully opposed. Additionally, 64% approved of presidential pardons and commutations in general. “I think these pardons/commutations should be very limited, and only used to address injustices or situations where the offender genuinely turned their life around,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese organization devoted to pursuing a world without nuclear weapons, recently won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. The organization is composed of survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha, who draw on their personal experiences to educate and advocate for nuclear disarmament. “No nuclear weapon has been used in war in nearly 80 years,” the Nobel Committee said. “The extraordinary efforts of Nihon Hidankyo and other representatives of the Hibakusha have contributed greatly to the establishment of the nuclear taboo.” Read the announcement here. 

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