Donald Trump Handed Crunch Court Hearing a Month After 2024 Election

Donald Trump is set for a civil trial hearing related to his defamation lawsuit against ABC News a month after November's presidential election.

According to court filings submitted in a Florida court on April 29, a mediation conference involving both parties is set to be held on Zoom on December 5, when lawyers for Trump and ABC News can discuss possible ways to settle the dispute. The court papers said retired Judge Alan Fine would act as the meeting's mediator.

The 2024 presidential election is scheduled to take place on November 5. Trump, who won enough primaries in March to secure the Republican Party's nomination, is expected to be on the ballot.

Trump is suing ABC News and George Stephanopoulos over the host's on-air remark that the former president was found "liable for rape" in a case involving writer E. Jean Carroll.

In 2023, a New York civil court found that Trump had sexually abused Carroll in 1996, but the jury did not find he had raped her.

The judge in that case later said the rape claim was "substantially true ... albeit digitally [with his fingers] rather than with his penis."

At the time of the trial, New York law defined rape as committed using genitals. In January, New York expanded its definition of rape to include nonconsensual anal, oral and vaginal sexual contact.

Newsweek has contacted Trump's and ABC's legal teams for comment via email.

The Context

In November, Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, is set to face off against President Joe Biden once again in the race for the White House.

Miami federal Judge Cecilia Altonaga previously set an April 7, 2025, date for the civil defamation trial between Trump, ABC News and Stephanopoulos. The post-election date means that if Trump wins the 2024 election, he may become the first sitting president to give evidence in a defamation lawsuit.

Trump is currently on criminal trial in New York over allegations he falsified business records to cover up an alleged affair he had with adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election. Trump is expected to appear in court in connection with three other criminal trials, but trial dates for the federal and state cases have not been finalized.

What We Know

In March, Stephanopoulos interviewed South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace, a rape survivor, and questioned why she continued to support Trump for the presidency after "judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape."

In May 2023, a New York civil jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll, and then defaming her character while denying the assault took place. The jurors found Trump had sexually abused Carroll, not that he had raped her.

Trump sued ABC News and Stephanopoulos over claims that the host acted with "actual malice or with a reckless disregard for the truth" by suggesting the New York civil jury had found the former president liable for raping Carroll in the 1990s.

Lawyers from both parties previously agreed that Fine should act as the mediator in the case.

Altonaga has now scheduled the mediation conference in this matter for December 5 at 10 a.m.

The purpose of a mediation conference is to give both parties in a civil case the opportunity to resolve the issue, such as an agreed upon settlement, rather than going to trial.

Though the New York jury did not find that Trump had raped Carroll, Judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversaw the civil trial, has since written in two separate filings that the former president had committed the act under a broader definition used in other states.

"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,'" Kaplan wrote in July.

He continued: "Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that."

Update, 4/30/24, 7:05 a.m. ET: This story has been updated to include more information.