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ABC News settles defamation suit ahead of trial as Donald Trump staffs up his incoming administration
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ABC News on Saturday agreed to a $15 million settlement stemming from Trump’s defamation suit involving a broadcast about E. Jean Carroll, who herself had successfully sued the president-elect for defamatory statements.
According to court documents, anchor George Stephanopoulos and the network were sued after Stephanopoulos wrongly said that the ex-president was found liable for rape at civil trial; he was actually found liable for sexual “abuse” for the incident dating back to 1996.
The decision by the network to reach a settlement with Trump was met with accusations of cowardice online from critics who argued that the company should have fought the lawsuit at trial.
Meanwhile, one of Donald Trump’s last remaining opponents in the GOP seems to have come to terms with the future of the Republican Party as a Trumpified political movement.
“MAGA is the Republican Party and Donald Trump is the Republican Party today,” Mitt Romney says in a new interview.
This weekend the president-elect also named several more picks for his administration on Saturday, including Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes to run an intelligence board, and staunch loyalist foreign policy adviser Richard Grenell as a presidential envoy for special missions.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul is calling on Washington to do more about the mysterious drones spotted in recent weeks above the Northeast.
The governor said in a statement on Saturday on X that drone activity prompted officials to shut down Stewart Airfield in New Windsor for about an hour last night.
White House has said threats from drones are ‘not credible’ and most sightings are likely just regular aircraft
CNN’s State of the Union interviewed retiring senator Mitt Romney on Sunday. The Republican senator has been one of Donald Trump’s last remaining opponents in the GOP, but bowed out of the Senate this year.
Romney seems to have come to terms with the future of the Republican Party as a Trumpified political movement.
“MAGA is the Republican Party and Donald Trump is the Republican Party today,” the Utah senator told Jake Tapper, adding: “Democrats have badly misread the direction of the country… and President Trump took advantage of that.”
Watch a clip here:
“MAGA is the Republican Party and Donald Trump is the Republican Party today.”@SenatorRomney tells @jaketapper Trump deserves credit for appealing to working class voters and predicts that JD Vance will likely be the GOP presidential nominee in 2028. pic.twitter.com/c1RUd1X6jG
Donald Trump announced on Saturday that Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes and the president-elect’s Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell have been selected to serve in his upcoming administration.
Nunes, as former California House Representative, was tapped for to serve as Chairman of Trump’s Intelligence Advisory Board, while Grenell was picked to serve as his Presiential Envoy for Special Missions.
While Nunes was in office he served on the House Intelligence Committee and consistently backed any move then-President Trump made. He also led the two-year investigation into US’s responde to the 2012 Benghazi attack, which ultimate found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the US State Department under Hillary Clinton.
Nunes also refused to back an investigation into Trump former national security adviser and Q-Anon conspiracy theorist Michael Flynn after it was revealed he had unreported discussions with Russian officials while serving under Trump.
“From everything that I can see, his conversations with the Russian ambassador—he was doing this country a favor, and he should be thanked for it,” Nunes said at the time.
Grenell formerly served as Trump’s ambassador to Germany and his Director of National Intelligence.
Prior to his involvement in Trump’s administration, Grenell was a consultant for an eastern European oligarch, Vladimir Plahotniuc. He faced criticism after he wrote articles defending the oligarch without making clear he was being paid to manage the man’s image.
Grenell is a former Fox News contributor and was named as a VP at the far-right media outlet Newsmax in 2021. He earned the ire of the media in 2020 when, during a Trump press conference, he refused to identify himself to reporters and publicly accused the state of covering up incidents of voter fraud in order to help the election prospects of then-Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
These claims were made without evidence, and Mr Grenell refused to answer questions from journalists who demanded he prove his assertions.
Joe Biden’s secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, on Sunday addressed the spotting of small drone aircraft in New Jersey in an interview Sunday on ABC’s This Week.
“There’s no question that people are seeing drones,” he said. “I want to assure the American public that we in the federal government have deployed additional resources, personnel, technology to assist the New Jersey State Police in addressing the drone sightings.”
The drones — or drone — are about the size of an SUV, which is larger than a drone a hobbyist would fly
A transgender activist who staged a sit-in at the US Capitol to protest House Republicans’ new policy targeting a transgender incoming member of Congress tells The Independent that the 2024 election cycle shows that LGBTQ+ Americans really can’t trust Democrats to have their backs in a fight.
“Unfortunately, the signals coming from our government right now, under a Democratic president, are telling us that we’re essentially on our own,” the 33-year-old activist told our Io Dodds in an interview.
In the face of ‘eradication’, one trans activist is preparing to fight – and she’s sick of silence and neglect from her supposed allies. Raquel Willis tells Io Dodds why Republican bathroom bans are everybody’s problem
Donald Trump’s incoming “border czar” has suggested the president-elect’s plans for mass deportations will begin in Chicago, part of a plan that would deploy law enforcement officers into communities across the country for broad sweeps targeting people living in the country without legal permission.
The Windy City’s mayor is vowing to protect his city’s residents from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents who could push into schools and workplaces, butting against so-called “sanctuary” policies barring federal forces from using local police for deportation enforcement.
“What the Trump administration has called for is for local police departments around the country to behave as ICE agents. In sanctuary cities, that is not permissible,” Chicago’s Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson told CNN.
READ MORE:
Tom Homan told Democratic officials to ‘get the hell out of the way’ or risk prosecution
Senate Republican leader and polio survivor Mitch McConnell on Friday condemned “dangerous” efforts to abolish the polio vaccine following news that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s lawyer’s tried to do just that.
Attorney Aaron Siri in 2022 petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to revoke its approval for multiple critical childhood vaccines, including the polio vaccine. News of Siri’s action resurfaced just weeks after RFK Jr. was named by President-elect Donald Trump as his pick to be secretary of Health and Human Services. Siri is currently helping Kennedy vet officials to serve in the department.
Kennedy is known for his extreme anti-vaccine positions which are widely derided by the mainstream medical community. Siri’s petition claimed the vaccine was not properly tested to ensure it was safe, despite its decade-long use protecting millions of children from contracting the disease.
READ MORE:
‘The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and held out the promise of eradicating a terrible disease,’ said outgoing Republican Senate leader
Barron Trump has been described as a “ladies’ man” around the New York University (NYU) campus, where he is so popular that even his liberal classmates like him.
An insider at NYU’s Stern School of Business, where Barron enrolled this fall, told People magazine that Donald Trump’s only son with third wife Melania Trump has proven to be “popular with the ladies.”
“He’s tall and handsome,” the source said of the 18-year-old, who stands an astonishing six feet nine inches tall.
READ MORE:
Donald Trump’s youngest son is reportedly a ‘ladies’ man’ on NYU campus
Donald Trump’s transition team is reportedly considering scrapping a car-crash reporting requirement that Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk stongly opposes, according to a new report.
According to Reuters, which viewed a document reportedly proposing the change, the removal of the requirement could hamstring the government’s ability to effectively investigate crashes and regulate the safety of vehicles with self-driving systems, like Musk’s Teslas and Cybertrucks.
Musk, who is the world’s richest man, used his vast wealth to pour a quarter of a billion dollars into Trump’s 2024 campaign. If Trump’s team does remove the accident reporting requirements, it would likely directly benefit Musk’s Tesla, which has reported the majority of crashes — more than 1,500 — to federal safety regulators under the program.
READ MORE:
The NHTSA said the information collected by the reporting requirement is crucial to improving the safety for American motorists
ABC has agreed to pay $15 million as part of a settlement with Donald Trump after the president-elect sued the network and host George Stephanopoulos for defamation.
In March, Stephanopoulos pressed congresswoman Nancy Mace about her support for the former president despite a judge finding him “liable for rape by a jury,” he said.
“Donald Trump has been found liable for defaming the victim of that rape by a jury,” Stephonopoulos said on ABC’s This Week at the time. “It’s been affirmed by a judge.”
READ MORE:
Host George Stephanopoulos incorrectly claimed Trump was held civilly liable for rape
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