A federal judge on Wednesday rejected Donald Trump’s request for a new trial in a civil case brought by E Jean Carroll, in which a jury found the former US president liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer and awarded her $5m in damages. In a 59-page decision, US district judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan said the jury did not reach a “seriously erroneous result,” and the 9 May verdict was not a “miscarriage of justice”. Carroll had accused Trump of raping her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s, and then branding the incident a hoax in an October 2022 post on his Truth Social platform. Trump had argued that awarding Carroll $2m in compensatory damages for sexual assault was “excessive” because the jury found he had not raped her, while the award for defamation was based on “pure speculation”. Lawyers for Trump and Carroll did not immediately respond to requests for comment.