In the interview that prompted the lawsuit, Mr. Stephanopoulos asked Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, who has spoken publicly about being raped as a teenager, why she had continued to support Mr. Trump after he was found “liable for rape” in a civil case in Manhattan last year.
In that case, a federal jury found Mr. Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, but it did not find him liable for rape. Still, the judge who oversaw the proceeding later clarified that because of New York’s narrow legal definition of rape, the jury’s verdict did not mean that Ms. Carroll had “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”
Mr. Trump was ordered by a jury in the Carroll case to pay her damages of $83.3 million. He is appealing the verdict.
Mr. Trump ultimately sued ABC in March, accusing Mr. Stephanopoulos of harming his reputation by saying multiple times on-air that he had been found liable for raping Ms. Carroll.
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