Why ABC settled a case they knew they would win — and why the Lincoln Project didn't

Since 2012, the U.S. Dept. Trump’s ‘what’s a little groping among friends’ defense argued that $5m in damages was excessive because the jury didn’t say Trump raped Carroll, only that he sexually assaulted her.Trump’s claim led presiding U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan to clarify in a memorandum that, in legal parlance, inserting anything into a woman’s vagina against her will, including Trump’s nasty fingers, was, indeed, rape: 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 recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that. ABC settled a case they knew they would win Months after Kaplan’s clarification of the jury’s finding, ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos said on the air that Trump was found liable for rape. And yet, to protect separate corporate interests of its parent company, Disney, ABC News decided to ‘settle’ the case, pay Trump $15m, and officially apologize for telling the truth. Citing N.Y. Times Co. v. Sullivan, the appellate court found “no error in the trial court's determinations that Flynn's lawsuit against Wilson lacked merit and that it was brought "primarily" because of Wilson's exercise of his First Amendment rights.” Whether Flynn was a Putin employee or, in fact, embodied “Q,” was splitting hairs as to the overall message Wilson was conveying: that Trump’s own national security advisor was a moron who supported Russian interests over the U.S.