CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Members of Venezuela’s political opposition who have been sheltering for months in the Argentine diplomatic compound in the capital, Caracas, on Saturday detailed their deteriorating living conditions as they sought to grow a sense of urgency among the governments working to secure their safe departure from their home country.
Their comments to reporters via an online news conference came three days after Argentina’s government urged the Organization of American States to pressure Venezuela to allow the safe passage of the six members of the opposition living at the ambassador’s residence.
The harassment, according to those who spoke to reporters, includes constant surveillance by heavily armed security agents, the interruption of water and electric services, and this week’s arrest of a longtime local employee of the Argentine embassy.
“We are seeing how the process of violating our basic human rights is accelerating, and it is urgent to be able to stop this situation of control and repression against us, whether psychological or real,” said Magalli Meda, campaign manager of opposition powerhouse María Corina Machado.
Venezuela’s Minister of Interior Diosdado Cabello last week called the group’s allegations a “farce.”
The government of President Javier Milei in August transferred custody of the diplomatic compound in Caracas to Brazil after Venezuela expelled Argentina’s diplomats. The move followed a July presidential election marred by serious fraud allegations and which both President Nicolás Maduro and the opposition claim to have won.
But Maduro revoked Brazil’s authorization to guard the facility in September, even though that nation’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, had attempted to help Venezuela break its political stalemate following the presidential vote.
“The Brazilian Foreign Ministry has made the contacts and the corresponding arrangements,” said Pedro Urruchurtu, who along three other men and two women has lived at the diplomatic facility since March. "We ask Brazil to have a much greater sense of urgency, in this sense it means redoubling efforts and coordination with the region and understanding that this situation can clearly get worse and therefore demands the attention of the entire region.”
Venezuela’s protracted political crisis deepened after the July 28 presidential election. The country’s National Electoral Council, which is stacked with Maduro loyalists, declared him the election winner hours after polls closed. But unlike previous presidential elections, electoral authorities did not provide detailed vote counts.
Meanwhile, the opposition, led by Machado, collected tally sheets from 80% of the nation’s electronic voting machines, posted them online and said the voting records showed that the faction’s candidate, Edmundo González, had won the election with twice as many votes as Maduro.
On Wednesday, Brazil’s ambassador to the Organization of American States, Benoni Belli, told country representatives gathered in Washington to address the situation at the diplomatic compound that the safe passage of the opposition members “has been the subject of high-level negotiations” involving Venezuelan and Brazilian officials, including the countries' foreign affairs ministers.
Diplomatic premises are considered foreign soil and “inviolable” under the Vienna treaties and host country law enforcement agencies are not allowed to enter without permission from the ambassador.
Belli said that Venezuelan officials through “informal statements” have reiterated that “the inviolability of the property” in Caracas “will be preserved.”
Afterward, more than a dozen members of the regional organization joined Argentina’s call on Maduro’s government to allow the safe passage of those living at the ambassador’s residence and end the alleged harassment.
FILE - A police patrol car sits parked outside Argentina's embassy where some members of Venezuela's opposition are seeking asylum inside, in Caracas, Venezuela, July 31, 2024, three days after the contested presidential election. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million toward Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos' inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.
As part of the settlement made public Saturday, ABC News posted an editor's note to its website expressing regret over Stephanopoulos' statements during a March 10 segment on his “This Week” program. The network will also pay $1 million in legal fees to the law firm of Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito.
The settlement agreement describes ABC's presidential library payment as a “charitable contribution," with the money earmarked for a non-profit organization that is being established in connection with the yet-to-be built library.
“We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing,” ABC News spokesperson Jeannie Kedas said.
A Trump spokesperson declined comment.
Trump, Stephanopoulos and ABC executives signed the settlement agreement on Friday.
The document bore Trump’s bold, distinct signature and an electronic signature with the initials GRS in a space for Stephanopoulos’ name. Debra OConnell, the president of ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks, also e-signed the agreement.
ABC News must transfer the $15 million for Trump's library to an escrow account that's being managed by Brito’s law firm within 10 days, according to the agreement. The network must also pay pay Brito’s legal fees within 10 days.
While sizeable, ABC's contribution to Trump's presidential library will likely cover just a fraction of the cost. Former President Barack Obama's library in Chicago, for example, was estimated to cost $830 million as of 2021.
Trump sued ABC and Stephanopoulos in federal court in Miami days after the network aired the segment, in which the longtime “Good Morning America” anchor repeatedly misstated the verdicts in Carroll’s two civil lawsuits against Trump.
During a live interview with Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., Stephanopoulos wrongly claimed that Trump had been “found liable for rape” and “defaming the victim of that rape.”
Neither verdict involved a finding of rape as defined under New York law.
In the first of the lawsuits to go to trial, Trump was found liable last year of sexually assaulting and defaming Carroll. A jury ordered him to pay her $5 million.
In January, at a second trial in federal court in Manhattan, Trump was found liable on additional defamation claims and ordered to pay Carroll $83.3 million.
Trump is appealing both verdicts.
Carroll, a former advice columnist, went public in a 2019 memoir with her allegation that Trump raped her in the mid-1990s at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury Manhattan department store across the street from Trump Tower, after they crossed paths at an entrance.
Trump denied her claim, saying he didn't know Carroll and never ran into her at the store.
After Trump lashed out, calling Carroll a “nut job” who invented “a fraudulent and false story” to sell her memoir, she sued him for unspecified monetary damages and sought a retraction of what she said were Trump’s defamatory denials.
Testifying in April 2023, Carroll told jurors: “I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen. He lied and shattered my reputation, and I’m here to try and get my life back."
After she'd agreed to help Trump shop for a gift for a woman, Carroll testified that he pushed her against a dressing room wall, stamped his mouth onto hers, yanked down her tights and shoved his hand and then his penis inside her while she struggled against him.
She said she finally kneed him off her and fled.
In upholding the $5 million judgment in the first trial, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote that the unanimous verdict was almost entirely in favor of Carroll, except that the jury concluded she had failed to prove that Trump raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law.”
Kaplan, who presided over both of Carroll's lawsuits against Trump, said the definition of rape in the state code was “far narrower” than how rape is defined in common modern parlance, in some dictionaries, in some federal and state criminal statutes and elsewhere.
Under New York law, a rape finding requires vaginal penetration by a penis. Forcible penetration without consent of the vagina or other bodily orifices by fingers or anything else is labeled “sexual abuse.”
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.’ Indeed ... the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Zeke Miller contributed to this report.
President-elect Donald Trump, left, and Vice President-elect JD Vance attend the NCAA college football game between Army and Navy at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Md., Saturday, Dec. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
