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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.
Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s embattled nominee to lead the Department of Defense, will release a woman from a non-disclosure agreement that followed a 2017 sexual assault allegation against the former Fox News anchor, according to Senator Lindsey Graham.
“He told me he would release her from that agreement,” the South Carolina Republican told NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday. “Just think about what we’re talking about. I’d want to know if anybody nominated for a high-level job in Washington legitimately assaulted somebody.”
Graham compared Hegseth’s nomination to the 2018 confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was publicly accused of sexually assaulting former classmate Christine Blasey Ford.
“If people have any allegation to make, come forward and make it,” Graham said. “Like they did in Kavanaugh, we’ll decline whether or not it’s credible. Right now he’s being tried by anonymous sources, that will not stand.”
More details in our full story.
Hegseth insists 2017 allegations are false
Federal officials sought to ease tensions but had no concrete answers for reporters about mysterious sightings of drone aircraft in New Jersey which have led to alleged sightings across the eastern seaboard.
Officials with several agencies explained that reviews of thousands of reports to tip lines, 911 centers and other sources revealed the vast majority of sightings in New Jersey and elsewhere to be cases of persons mistaking low-flying commercial aircraft conducting holding patterns around regional airports.
Biden administration and members of Congress are investigating reports of drones across the East Coast
The scores of prisoners freed after the downfall of the Bashar Assad regime in Syria are giving hope to Debra Tice, mother of the American journalist Austin Tice, who has been missing since being detained in 2012.
She’s been closely following reports out of the country, where another missing American, religious pilgrim Travis Timmerman, was found in the town of Dhiyabiya, after being held for seven months. Initial reports wrongly identified him as Tice.
On Sunday, she sat down for an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press.
New regime in Syria still looking for information about missing journalist to no avail
Mitt Romney said in his interview on Sunday that Republicans won the 2024 election due to their successful effort to peel off working-class voters from the Democratic Party’s voting coalition.
“The Democrat Party is the one in trouble. I mean, I don’t know how they recover,” said the senator. “Union guys, and gals … have left the Democratic Party.”
He went on to blame that trend on the Democrats’ embrace of transgender rights and a focus on cultural issues while the party ignored economic issues.
Utah senator, who is soon to step down, says he was ‘wrong’ about assumption Trump would lose 2024 election
George Santos is apparently not the most popular political celebrity in New York, where he now lives as a private citizen following his 2023 expulsion from Congress.
Former New York congressman pleaded guilty to identity theft and wire fraud in August
ABC’s $15 million settlement with Donald Trump following the president-elect’s defamation lawsuit has alarmed legal analysts and drawn criticism that the network and its Disney parent company gave up without a fight.
On Saturday, it was announced that ABC and host George Stephanopoulos agreed to settle the claims at the center of Trump’s lawsuit against the network and one of its star anchors, who was sued for stating that Trump was found “liable for rape by a jury.”
Trump claimed George Stephanopoulos defamed him when he said a jury found him ‘liable for rape’
A lawmaker on the House committee overseeing the US intelligence community on Sunday batted down rumors being leveled about mysterious sightings of drones in New Jersey and possibly elsewhere along the US east coast.
Federal agencies put out a joint statement on Thursday declaring that the spotted drones in New Jersey did not represent a foreign threat or any danger to public safety, but did not provide an explanation for what worried New Jerseyans were seeing from their homes.
Watch Jim Hines on CNN’s State of the Union here:
Congressman questions why FAA officials have not debunked conspiracy theories
Utah Senator Mike Lee’s latest conspiratorial rant on Fox News suggested that his Democratic foes “destroyed” key evidence surrounding January 6 which would have implicated the FBI or other federal agencies in instigating the throngs of Trump supporters to attack the Capitol.
The Republican lawmaker is hoping to keep the dream of January 6 nonsense alive after a Department of Justice review found no evidence of federal agents instigating violence in the crowd.
Justice Department watchdog found ‘no evidence’ FBI had undercover agents at the Capitol
In the decade since SpaceX arrived on the Texas coast, billionaire Elon Musk‘s company has created thousands of jobs near the Mexico border, launched rockets and sprung up new homes — all around an area dubbed Starbase.
Now SpaceX wants to make Starbase a recognized city.
SpaceX has formally petitioned a Texas county to start the process for becoming a city
Chris Rock made the crowd groan during his Saturday Night Live monologue with a joke about Twitter CEO Elon Musk.
The 59-year-old stand-up comedian and actor hosted the sketch comedy show last night (December 14).
During his monologue, Rock made reference to Donald Trump’s successful year, noting that he’d survived an assassination attempt, been re-elected to the US presidency and been named Time’s Person of the Year.
Rock referred to the Tesla and X owner as ‘the richest African American in the world’
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