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America’s ABC News will pay US$15 million ($23 million) to Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a lawsuit over an inaccurate claim that the president-elect was found civilly liable for the rape of writer E. Jean Carroll.

Anchor George Stephanopoulos had claimed during an interview with South Carolina representative Nancy Mace that Trump had been “found responsible for rape,” which misrepresented statements in Carroll’s two lawsuits against him.

ABC will also post a note on its website expressing regret over the claim in a March 10 segment on Stephanopoulos’ “This Week” program and pay $1 million in legal fees to Trump’s attorney, according to court documents .

ABC News said it was “pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit based on the terms of the lawsuit.”

Last year, Trump was found liable for sexually assaulting and defaming Carroll and ordered to pay her $5 million.

In January, he was found liable for additional defamation claims and ordered to pay $83.3 million to Carroll.

Trump will appeal both rulings.

Neither ruling was a finding of rape as defined under New York law.

The judge in both cases, Lewis Kaplan, has said the jury’s conclusion was that Carroll had failed to prove Trump raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of New York criminal law.” .

Judge Kaplan noted that the definition of rape was “much narrower” than how rape is defined in modern parlance, in some dictionaries, in some federal and state criminal statutes, and elsewhere.

The judge said the verdict did not mean that Carroll “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her, as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ In fact… the jury found that Mr. Trump did, in fact, do just that.”

AP