Judge Rules Trump’s ABC News Defamation Suit Can Proceed

Most of us have been licking our chops at the thought of Trump dealing ABC News and George Stephanopoulos a massive financial blow.

In March, Stephanopoulos claimed that Donald Trump had been found liable for rape.

Trump then sued Stephanopoulos and ABC News for defamation, which a motion had been filed to dismiss.

Sorry, George

Trump initially filed the suit in March after Stephanopoulos made that claim on the air.

The suit claimed, "Stephanopoulos' false, defamatory, and misleading statements about Plaintiff immediately spread like wildfire, as numerous third parties and media outlets repeated and reposted them to countless viewers."

ABC News and Stephanopoulos then filed a motion to have the case dismissed.

The jury rejected the rape claim, but did find Trump guilty of a lesser degree of sexual abuse.

The controversy comes over the opinion of the verdict by Judge Kaplan, who was appointed to the bench by Bill Clinton.

Judge Kaplan wrote, “The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”

But again, his opinion is one thing, but the jury ruled it was not rape, so it’s not rape, period.

When Stephanopoulos reported the story, it was presented as though Trump had been found liable for rape, but he was found liable for sexual abuse. Some might call that semantics, but U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga did not.

Altonaga, George W. Bush's appointee, declined to toss the suit, ordering that Trump can proceed.

Trump responded, "A power case! Before you know it, the fake news media will be forced by the courts to start telling the truth.

"This is a great day for our country. MAGA2024!"

I would love to see Trump win this case just to deal the mainstream media a blow so significantly that they may actually start reporting the truth, for once.