(CN) — A federal judge in Miami Wednesday denied ABC News’ request to dismiss Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the network and one of its star journalists, George Stephanopoulos, relating to the the anchor’s comment that the former president had been “found liable for rape.”
In a 21-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga rejected the news network’s and host’s arguments that the suit should be dismissed because the statements made were “substantially true” and Stephanopoulos is shielded by the fair report privilege available to him under Florida law.
Trump’s suit stems from an interview Stephanopoulos conducted in March with Republican U.S. Representative Nancy Mace during his show “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” The anchor asked Mace about her endorsement of Trump despite the fact he was “found liable for rape.”
He repeated the phrase ten times during the interview, at one point stating: “Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape,” and the “judge affirmed that it was, in fact, rape.”
Nine days later, Trump filed his defamation lawsuit in the Southern District Court of Florida.
Altonaga wrote that she is was not persuaded by the network’s collateral estoppel defense, which precludes a party from relitigating an issue that has been decided against them, if they had a fair opportunity to fully litigate the point. The defendants’ pointed to Carroll v. Trump, relating to E. Jean Carroll’s accusations that Trump sexually assaulted and raped her.
Stephanopoulos’ statement at issue refers the civil cases brought Carroll brought against Trump in 2019.
“Here, the ‘facts and realties’ of the prior litigation show that Judge Kaplan’s findings, however broadly they were phrased, arose while considering a meaningfully distinct context from the ‘facts and realties’ presented in this case given Plaintiff’s allegations,” Altonaga wrote Wednesday.
“In Carroll II, Judge Kaplan was reviewing a jury’s damages award. His analysis necessarily focused on what Carroll had and had not proved at trial, as well as the harm Carroll experienced from Plaintiff’s abuse. There was no discussion of how to accurately report on the jury’s findings,” the George W. Bush appointee added.
Because Stephanopoulos’s statement was describing the jury’s verdict and not Trump’s actions or Carroll’s testimony, a reasonable jury could find interpret it as defamatory, the judge wrote.
While Florida’s fair report privilege grants news organizations qualified protection when they report accurately on information received from government officials, it does not protect them where the omission of important context renders a misleading report, Altonaga added.
“Here, a reasonable viewer — especially one who was aware that Plaintiff had been charged with rape under New York Penal Law — could have been misled by Stephanopoulos’s statements, which did not include the jury’s original findings and only fleetingly referenced the interpretation Judge Kaplan later offered,” she wrote.
In May 2023, a jury found Trump guilty of sexually abusing and defaming Carroll, but not of rape as defined under New York law.
In a later legal challenge, the federal judge presiding over the Carroll sexual assault case, Lewis Kaplan, concluded that the jury’s finding that Carroll failed to prove Trump had raped her under New York’s definition did not mean she failed to prove “rape” as understood by common usage. Kaplan said the jury’s verdict established that Trump had “raped” Carroll, “albeit digitally rather than with his penis”.
Altonaga made clear in her ruling that she wasn’t weighing in on the merits of Trump’s claim that he was defamed, but her decision allows his lawsuit to move forward as he continues his 2024 presidential reelection bid.
The former president, who has gained a reputation for regularly criticizing the press as being unfair and has filed multiple unsuccessful lawsuits against news outlets, hailed the ruling as a “BIG WIN” against “ABC FAKE NEWS” in a post on his Truth Social platform.