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| Donald Trump and George Stephanopoulos (AP Photo) |
Donald Trump's lawsuit against ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos is not designed to win a valid case, but is a form of bullying the media, according to an article at Yahoo! News, with original reporting from Rolling Stone (RS). In fact, Trump could wind up facing legal consequences -- including a countersuit for a tort known as "abuse of process" -- and that could cost him significant financial damages.
Under the headline "Trump’s ‘Lunatic’ ABC Lawsuit Is About Bullying the Media, Not Winning," reporters
According to those who’ve spoken to him lately, former President Donald Trump doesn’t seem to think he’s actually going to win his defamation lawsuit against ABC News and its star host George Stephanopoulos — but that’s not the point.
In a recent interview with U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R.-S.C.), Stephanopoulos asserted that Trump had been “found liable for rape and defaming” the victim, writer E. Jean Carroll, by judges and two juries. As a factual matter, a jury found Trump defamed and sexually abused Carroll — and he was ordered to pay $83 million for defaming her again. Trump’s lawsuit claims Stephanopoulos’ comments were “false, intentional, malicious, and designed to cause harm.”
Behind closed doors, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee has told confidants and lawyers that a primary purpose of the suit is to make an example of Stephanopoulos, two people with direct knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone. In recent days, Trump has privately said that “everyone” in the media should think twice about calling him a “rapist” on TV and in print, and that “tak[ing] them to court” — win or lose — is a good way to remind them of that, one of the people says.
“‘It’s not about the money,’ was the impression that I got,” says the other source, who discussed the situation with the ex-president. “This is about not fucking around with Donald Trump.”
(Note: Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee who has repeatedly made rulings that favor him in the classified-documents case, hears cases in the Southern District of Florida, where the case was filed. Did Trump bring this case with hopes of having it wind up before Cannon?)
This lawsuit is just another example of Trump acting with terrible judgment -- and it adds to the mountain of evidence that he is unfit to serve in the presidency or any other public office. In fact, the Rolling Stone headline, describing the Trump lawsuit as "lunatic," probably is being charitable. For one thing, the case appears to be filed in the wrong jurisdiction. ABC News is based in New York City -- This Week is filmed at ABC headquarters -- and Stephanopoulos and his family live in Manhattan.
Alejandro Brito, Trump's attorney, is based in Coral Gables, FL, but that does not mean jurisdiction for the Trump lawsuit is proper in U.S. District Court of South Florida, Miami Division. In fact, the case almost certainly will have to be heard in New York. As a veteran of many court skirmishes, Trump should know that, and his lawyer certainly should know it. That the case was improperly filed in Florida suggests Trump and his team are trying to pull a fast one -- imagine that -- adding to evidence that Trump is not fit to serve in public office.
Two, it is a matter of public record that Stephanopoulos' statements regarding the E. Jean Carroll case were "substantially true", and that is all he and ABC have to prove in order to overcome a defamation claim. That means Trump's suit is baseless and likely will be dismissed at summary judgment, without even going to a jury.
Lewis Kaplan, judge in the Carroll case, went on record calling Trump a "rapist," as the term is commonly understood among the general public and in many courts. Kaplan wrote:
The definition of rape in the New York Penal Law is far narrower than the meaning of ‘rape’ in common modern parlance, its definition in some dictionaries, in some federal and state criminal statutes, and elsewhere,” the court noted, citing dictionaries and other jurisdictions’ laws defining “rape” as non-consensual penetration of any kind. 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.” Indeed, as the evidence at trial makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.
Stephanopoulos accurately reported the judge's finding, and according to the judge, the findings of the jury. Trump's case would have to improve to deserve the tag "without merit.'
Alejandro Brito, Trump's attorney, is based in Coral Gables, FL, but that does not mean jurisdiction for the Trump lawsuit is proper in U.S. District Court of Florida, Miami Division. In fact, the case almost certainly will have to be heard in New York.As a veteran of many court skirmishes, Trump should know that, and his lawyer certainly should know it. That the case was improperly filed in Florida suggests Trump and his team are trying to pull a fast one -- imagine that -- adding to evidence that Trump is not fit to serve in public office.Two, it is a matter of public record that Stephanopoulos' statements regarding the E. Jean Carroll case were "substantially true", and that is all he and ABC have to prove in order to overcome a defamation claim. That means Trump's claim is baseless and likely will be dismissed at summary judgment, without even going to a jury.
Lewis Kaplan, judge in the Carroll case, went on record calling Trump a "rapist," as the term is commonly understood among the general public and in many courts.
Sephanopoulos accurately reported the judge's finding, and according to the judge, the findings of the jury. Trump's case would have to improve to deserve the tag "without merit.'The American justice system has mechanisms to punish those who bring baseless cases -- and Trump should have known that, unless he is not capable of learning anything from his courtroom experiences. We have four years of evidence, via his first term, that Trump cannot handle the presidency. His hatchet job on the preventable coronavirus pandemic, which resulted in 1.2 million American deaths -- is the most glaring example.
As for "abuse of process," this is how the Stimmel Stimmel & Roeser website describes it:
Abuse of process refers to the improper use of a civil or criminal legal procedure for an unintended, malicious, or perverse reason. It is the malicious and deliberate misuse of regularly issued civil or criminal court process that is not justified by the underlying legal action.
Abuse of process includes litigation actions in bad faith that is meant to delay the delivery of justice. Examples include serving legal papers on someone which have not actually been filed with the intent to intimidate, or filing a lawsuit without a genuine legal basis in order to obtain information, force payment through fear of legal entanglement or gain an unfair or illegal advantage. The determination of what in unfair and wrong is for the court to determine on the individual facts of each case.
If Trump is too intellectually limited to know about abuse of process -- or at least ask a reputable lawyer about it -- he is too dim to be president, and it's past time for Americans of all political stripes to grasp that harsh reality. The Rolling Stone article indicates Trump's lawsuit against ABC News is a classic case of abuse of process.
What provided fuel for Trump's claim?
During a combative interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) on March 10, Stephanopoulos pressed Mace to answer how she could support a candidate who the ABC News host claimed had been “found liable for rape,” in a reference to the Carroll lawsuit. In May 2023, a federal jury found Trump liable for defamation and sexual abuse, but not rape, for assaulting Carroll in 1996 in a Bergdorff Goodman dressing room. (Trump has denied the accusations, and did so again earlier this month.)
Trump, the sources recount, grew absolutely livid when he saw the Stephanopoulos interview, and began calling up advisers and demanding a suit from his vast gallery of personal attorneys.
Some had advised the ex-president that a lawsuit could risk drawing more attention — including from voters in a crucial election year — to Carroll’s sexual-assault allegations, or possibly invite expensive sanctions from a court, the sources add. Trump, in conversations with close associates and MAGA-aligned lawyers, emphatically did not seem to care.
Trump apparently was too busy being a smart aleck to listen to sound advice -- a great quality to have in a president, right? From Rolling Stone:
Stephanopoulos has been under Trump’s skin lately, even before the interview with Mace. Earlier this month, the former president attacked Stephanopoulos during the Oscars, as part of a screed against the award show’s host, Jimmy Kimmel. “Get rid of Kimmel and perhaps replace him with another washed up, but cheap, ABC ‘talent,’ George Slopanopoulos,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “He would make everybody on stage look bigger, stronger, and more glamorous.”
Trump has a lengthy track record of lodging frivolous, intentionally vengeful lawsuits against his political and personal enemies. This one may be a longshot, too, though some legal observers are taking this suit more seriously than Trump’s past lawsuit threats and filings. For instance, Matt Ford at The New Republic argues that “the former president has a long losing streak against the media, but George Stephanopoulos’s rape commentary may have opened the door to his first big victory.”
As Ford notes, in Trump’s complaint, his lawyer points out that when Stephanopoulos interviewed Carroll last year, he specifically asked her what she was thinking when it was announced in the courtroom that Trump “was not found liable for rape.” If Stephanopoulos' reporting was "substantially true," and we have shown that it was, anything he asked about Trump being "liable for rape" does not matter.
It long has been a holding in American law that truth is an absolute defense to defamation, and the reporting only has to be "substantially true," not true on every element of the story. That likely is why other legal experts and longtime attorneys aren’t sold on Matt Ford's take.
“This lunatic Trump suit is purely performative and substantially less meritorious than even his typical performative lawsuits,” says Ken "Popehat" White, a First Amendment litigator and former federal prosecutor, describing the lawsuit as “complete bullshit.” The attorney adds, “it’s more attention-grabbing, more swinging fists at the media, another opportunity to get more political donations.”
Again, this is stuff Trump should have known -- or known how to find out. That he didn't could wind up biting him in the wallet, via "abuse of process" and other legal mechanisms designed to punish those who file meritless lawsuits. Rolling Stone concludes:
After a federal jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation against Carroll, Trump’s attorneys sought a new trial on damages in the case because, they argued, the sexual abuse for which the jury found him liable “could have included groping of [Carroll’s] breasts through clothing or similar conduct, which is a far cry from rape.”
Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the trial, found the argument “entirely unpersuasive.”
“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,’” Kaplan wrote, denying the motion for a new trial. “Indeed, as the evidence at trial makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
White argues the Trump defamation lawsuit is “very obviously wrong on its face, if you know anything about the cases.” He says, “Judge Kaplan in the E. Jean Carroll cases already rejected this same claim by Trump, who tried to bring a counterclaim against Carroll, claiming that she defamed him by saying the jury found that he was liable for ‘rape’ … Trump has had a run of really bad lawsuits. This one is unusually, vulgarly, obviously bad. This one doesn’t even pass the plausible claim test.”
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