ABC News has agreed to pay US President-elect Donald Trump $15m (£12m) to settle a defamation lawsuit after its star anchor falsely claimed he was “responsible for rape”.

In an interview on March 10th of this year, George Stephanopoulos repeated the statement while challenging a congresswoman about her support for Trump.

A jury in a civil case last year found Trump liable for “sexual abuse,” which has a specific definition under New York law.

As part of Saturday’s settlement, which was first reported by Fox News Digital, ABC will also publish a statement of its “regret” for the comments made by Stephanopoulos.

According to the settlement, ABC News will pay $15 million in “charitable contributions to a private foundation and museum.

Presidents of the United States of America have been established in the past.

The network agreed to pay $1 million for Trump’s legal fees.

Under the settlement, the network will post an editor’s note below the March 10, 2024, online news article about the story.

It will say: “ABC News and regrets the comments about George Stephanopoulos.

President Donald J. Trump was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos with correspondent Nancy Mays on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 2024.

An ABC News spokesperson said in a statement that the company is “pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms of the court filing.”

In 2023, a New York civil court found that Trump sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll in 1996 in a department store dressing room. He was also found guilty of defaming the magazine’s columnist.

Judge Lewis Kaplan said the jury’s conclusion was that Ms Carroll had failed to prove Trump had raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of New York penal law”.

Judge Kaplan noted that the definition of rape is “far narrower” than the way rape is defined in common modern usage in some dictionaries and in criminal statutes elsewhere.

In a separate case presided over by the same judge, a jury ordered Trump to pay Ms. Carroll $83.3 million for additional defamatory statements.

During the March 10 broadcast, Stephanopoulos asked from South Carolina

How Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mays Endorses Trump?

“Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape,” the anchor lied.

Stephanopoulos repeated the statement 10 times throughout the broadcast.

Ahead of the ruling, a federal magistrate judge ordered Trump and Stephanopoulos to give sworn testimony in depositions next week.

Trump has also sued CBS, the BBC’s US broadcast partner, for “deceptive conduct” over an interview with Kamala Harris.

In 2023, a judge threw out his defamation lawsuit against CNN, which he accused the network of likening him to Adolf Hitler.

He has also dismissed lawsuits filed against the New York Times and the Washington Post.