Judge rejects Trump's bid to toss E. Jean Carroll verdict — and says jury understood sexual abuse to mean 'rape'

Former President Donald Trump's push to redo the civil rape trial brought by writer E. Jean Carroll failed on Wednesday, as Reuters reports a federal judge rejected his motion.

"In a 59-page decision, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan said the jury did not reach a 'seriously erroneous result,' and the May 9 verdict was not a 'miscarriage of justice,'" said the report.

The lawsuit was brought after Carroll came forward with allegations that Trump raped her in a department store dressing room in the late 1990s, and Trump called her a liar. Carroll's suit alleged both sexual battery, and that Trump's denials and attacks on her character and motivations were defamatory and damaged her reputation and ability to find work.

The jury found Trump liable for defamation and sexual abuse, awarding her $2 million in damages. Trump argued that the judgment should be thrown out because the jury did not technically find the sexual abuse amounted to rape, and thus the size of the damages was excessive.

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Kaplan, however, rejected this argument, pointing out that even if the jury didn't find him liable for rape as legally defined, they found him liable for a sexual offense "as many people commonly understand the word 'rape'" — that is, that the attack amounted to something a lay person would colloquially call rape.

Even after the judgment against Trump, he continued repeating the same claims the jury found were defamatory, including at a CNN town hall in May where he led a largely-Republican audience in laughter over Carroll's accusations. Carroll responded with a legal motion for another round of damages.