ABC News, Stephanopoulos Seek Dismissal of Trump’s Miami Defamation Lawsuit

ABC, ABC News and Sunday host George Stephanopoulos seek the dismissal of former President Donald Trump’s March 18 defamation complaint for failure to state a claim, said the defendants’ motion Friday (docket 1:24-cv-21050) in U.S. District Court for Southern Florida in Miami. Trump alleges that Stephanopoulos, on his March 10 ABC television show, repeatedly said that multiple juries found Trump liable for raping journalist E. Jean Carroll (see 2403190059). In 2023, a federal jury found Trump liable for sexually assaulting Carroll, but not liable for raping her. Trump has appealed that verdict. Trump’s lawsuit seeks to relitigate “a meritless theory of defamation that he has already lost twice in New York,” said the motion to dismiss. Trump is “collaterally estopped from doing so here,” it said. If the Miami court were to reach the merits, “at bottom,” this case asserts that even after a jury has found that a person committed a violent sexual assault, it is defamatory to say that the person committed a rape, said the motion. That’s not a proposition that Florida law recognizes, it said. To the contrary, courts in Florida and around the country “have consistently rejected variations of this same theory,” it said: “This action therefore presents straightforward issues of law that this Court can -- and we submit should -- resolve on this motion to dismiss.” U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga granted the defendants’ motion for leave to "conventionally file," by delivery to the clerk, a USB flash drive containing video of the March 10 broadcast in support of their motion to dismiss, said the judge’s signed order Friday. Publications appearing in video form can't be electronically filed because the court's case management system doesn't permit filings to be submitted via USB flash drives without prior court approval, said the motion for leave.