Donald Trump sues ABC network and a journalist for defamation

Reuters

The former President of the United States, Donald Trump, future candidate for the Republican Party in the November elections, has filed a defamation lawsuit against the ABC network and journalist George Stephanopoulos for comments he made about the case of writer E. Jean Carroll.

According to the lawsuit, Trump accuses Stephanopoulos, host of the popular program "This Week With George Stephanopoulos", of falsely stating on several occasions that the former president had been found guilty of raping Carroll.

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The lawsuit, filed on Monday in the Southern District Court of Florida, accuses Stephanopoulos of making the statements maliciously and knowing they were false.

Last January, Trump was sentenced by a New York judge to pay a fine of 83.3 million dollars to Carroll for defaming her by saying in 2019 that he did not know her and that her accusations of sexual abuse against him were false.

That case, resolved at the end of January, was the second against Trump decided in favor of the writer.

Last May, a jury had already convicted the former president of sexual abuse—for touching Carroll without consent in an episode that occurred in the nineties in the changing rooms of a department store—as well as for subsequently defaming her, and to pay her 5 million dollars.

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Florida, the official state of residence of former President Trump, opened the polls this Tuesday morning for a Republican primary without significance in the presidential elections and in the midst of the already aggressive national campaign between the Republican and the current president, Democrat Joe Biden.

In this uncontested Republican primary, the so-called "Sunshine State" offers 125 delegates who will presumably add to Trump's count, who has already secured more than the 1,215 he needed before the July Republican National Convention to formalize his candidacy.