In our first episode, our plucky hero (bear with me -- Ed) has rattled the Empire by destroying its power base, using leaks to blow up its corporate HQ's legal department. (Reportedly, anyway.) In the sequel, we find out that the Empire has a lot more leaky firepower than the plucky hero, who might be fortunate if all that happens is that he ends up on an ice planet in the Protection Racket Media galaxy far, far too near.

If George Stephanopoulos wants to play Jedi leak tricks, looks like Disney isn't afraid to unleash the Power of the Mouse Side. The New York Post -- which serves as Tatooine, apparently -- offered up leaks that exposed the "actual malice" in play over the defamation suit settled by Disney with Donald Trump. And I'm not even talking about the lawsuit:

George Stephanopoulos was repeatedly told by his executive producer not to “use the word rape” before going on the air to discuss Donald Trump but the ABC News anchor ignored the warning — a decision that cost the network $16 million, The Post has learned.

Parent company Disney’s capitulation last week in the defamation lawsuit by Trump against ABC News and Stephanopoulos shocked media and legal experts, but the damning revelation could help explain why Mouse House CEO Bob Iger signed off on the settlement so quickly. ...

“‘This Week’ producer said ‘don’t use the word rape’ before the segment started,” a network source told The Post. “The EP [executive producer] said it so many times.”

A second source at the show confirmed via a text message viewed by The Post that Stephanopoulos was warned “not to say rape.”

As a number of people observed immediately on Twitter/X when this report came out last night, that would have been game-set-match in court. The Sullivan doctrine applies to public figures in defamation and libel cases by requiring a stronger standard of intent. For non-public figures, all plaintiffs need to show is that information published as fact are (a) false, (b) defamatory/damaging in a substantial manner, and (c) the result of negligence by the publisher. 

For public figures, however, Sullivan adds another requirement: "actual malice." That doesn't mean hatred, but rather the establishment that the defamation occurred over something  more than negligence -- that the publisher had good reason to know the information was false but published anyway. That is nearly impossible to prove, which is why two Supreme Court justices want to revisit Sullivan, but the one sure way to prove it is to get testimony or documentation that the publisher of the defamatory conduct was warned not to publish it. That's why discovery is so important in these cases ... and clearly why Disney didn't want to allow the case to go that far. 

That raises another question about this leak, however. If Disney spent $16 million to avoid having this come out in court, why have it leak now? First off, there may be other communications that Disney needed to keep buried that would have been more damaging than this one, so perhaps this isn't even much of a leak against interests. But it clearly seems intended to put an end to the effort to make Stephanopoulos into an Obi-Wan Kenobi martyr figure for the Protection Racket Media, whether that effort is coming from Stephanopoulos himself or his friends. 

Stephanopoulos didn't get stabbed in the back during a light-saber duel with Darth Iger. If this leak is accurate, Stephanopoulos was staring into the light saber when he hit the power button. And now Disney wants everyone to know it after the blowback they got for settling a case that their supposed "news" host created out of his own arrogance and toxic bias. Disney's willing to play the same game on the same turf, and they probably have played it a lot longer than Stephanopoulos. Heck, Iger has played it longer than Stephanopoulos.

Will this convince Stephanopoulos' allies to stand down? Probably not, so the rest of us should pop more popcorn. But if this leak is accurate, it demonstrates that Disney had no choice but to avoid a trial, and that the $16 million price tag may have been a far better discount than any found at its amusement parks.

Speaking of discounts, though, Stephanopoulos may have other motives for a potential leak war:

Coincidentally, an ABC News spokesperson told me today that Stephanopoulos has just signed a new, multiyear contract with the network, unrelated to the timing of the settlement. Several insiders speculated that Stephanopoulos’s new deal includes a pay cut, and noted that he is likely to eventually take on a more limited role, after already ceding pole-anchor position on special event coverage to David Muir. Disney is trying to lower costs across its linear portfolio, including at ABC’s Good Morning America, where Stephanopoulos and his co-anchors Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan have historically made around $25 million a year—a gross misalignment of funds, given the declining audience for morning television, generally, and particularly in light of GMA’s ratings slide since Almin Karamehmedovic became president of ABC News. Presumably, Stephanopoulos’s heir apparent, Whit Johnson, would deliver similar ratings and cost a lot less.

Indeed, that is where things seem to be headed—albeit with the discretion and diplomatic finesse befitting a revered network veteran who, despite his slip-ups, has earned the right to an elegant exit. Also, as you all know, television news is a business wherein executives and talent air kiss each other at lunch but complain ceaselessly about one another in private—their own version of being “electronically sloppy.” George may be headed toward his next act as a public figure, but no one wants to be the person responsible for it.

The "elegant exit" option is out, entirely of Stephanopoulos' own doing.