By Jack Queen and Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Donald&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;must&nbsp;pay&nbsp;$5&nbsp;million&nbsp;in damages for&nbsp;sexually&nbsp;abusing magazine&nbsp;writer&nbsp;E.&nbsp;Jean&nbsp;Carroll&nbsp;in the 1990s and then defaming&nbsp;her&nbsp;by branding&nbsp;her&nbsp;a liar, a&nbsp;jury&nbsp;decided on Tuesday.
"Today, the world finally knows the truth,"&nbsp;Carroll&nbsp;said in a statement. "This victory is not just for me but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed."
The former U.S. president, campaigning to retake the White House in 2024, will appeal, his lawyer Joseph Tacopina told reporters outside the Manhattan federal courthouse.
Carroll, 79, testified during the civil trial that&nbsp;Trump, 76, raped&nbsp;her&nbsp;in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan in either&nbsp;1995 or 1996, then harmed&nbsp;her&nbsp;reputation by writing in an October 2022 post on his Truth Social platform that&nbsp;her&nbsp;claims were a "complete con job," "a hoax" and "a lie."
Trump&nbsp;was absent throughout the trial which began on April 25. In a post on his Truth Social platform,&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;called the verdict a "disgrace" and said, "I have absolutely no idea who this woman is."
Because it was a civil case,&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;faces no criminal consequences and, as such, there was never a threat of prison.
The&nbsp;jury, required to reach a unanimous verdict, deliberated for just under three hours. Its six men and three women awarded&nbsp;Carroll&nbsp;$5&nbsp;million&nbsp;in compensatory and punitive damages, but&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;will not have to&nbsp;pay&nbsp;so long as the case is on appeal.
In April,&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;gave election regulators only the rough estimates of his wealth that are required in financial disclosures, listing over a dozen properties as worth "over $50&nbsp;million" each.
'CORE PRO-TRUMP&nbsp;VOTERS ARE NOT GOING TO CHANGE'
President from 2017 to 2021,&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;is the front-runner in opinion polls for the Republican presidential nomination and has shown an uncanny ability to weather&nbsp;controversies that might sink other&nbsp;politicians.
It seems unlikely in America's polarized political climate that the civil verdict will have an impact on&nbsp;Trump's core supporters, who view his legal woes as part of a concerted effort by opponents to undermine him.
"The folks that are anti-Trump&nbsp;are going to remain that way, the core pro-Trump&nbsp;voters are not going to change, and the ambivalent ones I just don&rsquo;t think are going to be moved by this type of thing," said Charlie Gerow, a Republican strategist in Pennsylvania.
Any negative impact is likely to be small and limited to suburban women and moderate Republicans, Gerow said.
Trump&nbsp;has cited the&nbsp;Carroll&nbsp;trial in campaign fundraising emails as evidence of what he portrays as a Democratic plot. He has said&nbsp;Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist and a registered Democrat, made up the allegations to try to increase sales of&nbsp;her&nbsp;2019 memoir and to hurt him politically.
His poll numbers improved after he was charged last month with falsifying business records over a hush money&nbsp;payment to a porn star before his victory in the 2016 presidential election.
The first U.S. president past or present to be criminally charged,&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;has pleaded not guilty and said the charges are politically motivated.
Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist, said it remained to be seen whether&nbsp;the verdict in&nbsp;Carroll's case would make&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;"unpalatable" to Republican voters beyond his base, prompting them to coalesce around another&nbsp;candidate.
The trial featured testimony from former People magazine reporter Natasha Stoynoff, who told jurors that&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;cornered&nbsp;her&nbsp;at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida in 2005 and forcibly kissed&nbsp;her&nbsp;for a "few minutes." Another&nbsp;woman, Jessica Leeds, testified that&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;kissed&nbsp;her, groped&nbsp;her&nbsp;and put his hand up&nbsp;her&nbsp;skirt on a flight in 1979.
Jurors also heard excerpts from a 2005 "Access Hollywood" video in which&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;says&nbsp;women let him "grab 'em by the pussy."
"Historically, that's true, with stars ... if you look over the last&nbsp;million&nbsp;years,"&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;said in an October 2022 video deposition played in court. He has repeatedly denied allegations of sexual misconduct.
TRUMP&nbsp;MISTAKES&nbsp;CARROLL&nbsp;FOR EX-WIFE
Carroll&nbsp;testified that she bumped into&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;at Bergdorf's and agreed to help him pick out a gift for another&nbsp;woman. The two looked at lingerie before he coaxed&nbsp;her&nbsp;into a dressing room, slammed&nbsp;her&nbsp;head into a wall, pulled down&nbsp;her&nbsp;tights and penetrated&nbsp;her, she testified.&nbsp;Carroll&nbsp;said she could not remember the precise date or year the alleged rape occurred.
Jurors were tasked with deciding whether&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;raped,&nbsp;sexually&nbsp;abused&nbsp;or forcibly touched&nbsp;Carroll, and were separately asked if&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;defamed&nbsp;Carroll. The jurors found&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;sexually&nbsp;abused&nbsp;her&nbsp;but not that he raped&nbsp;her.
Before the jurors began deliberating, Judge Lewis Kaplan defined rape for them as non-consensual "sexual intercourse" through "forcible compulsion." He described sexual abuse as non-consensual "sexual contact" through forcible compulsion.
Jurors awarded&nbsp;Carroll&nbsp;$2&nbsp;million&nbsp;in compensatory damages and $20,000 in punitive damages for&nbsp;her&nbsp;battery claim, and $2.7&nbsp;million&nbsp;in compensatory and $280,000 in punitive damages for&nbsp;her&nbsp;defamation claim.
Trump's legal team attacked the plausibility of&nbsp;Carroll's account including why she had never reported the matter to police or screamed during the alleged incident.
Two of&nbsp;Carroll's friends said that she told them about the alleged rape at the time but swore them to secrecy because she feared that&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;would use his fame and wealth to retaliate if she came forward.
Carroll&nbsp;told jurors she decided to break&nbsp;her&nbsp;silence in 2017 after rape allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein prompted scores of women to come forward with accounts of sexual violence by powerful men. She went public with&nbsp;her&nbsp;account while&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;was president.
She said&nbsp;Trump's public denials wrecked&nbsp;her&nbsp;career and instigated a campaign of vicious online harassment by his supporters.
While&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;did not testify at the trial, a video clip from the October 2022 deposition showed him mistaking&nbsp;Carroll&nbsp;for one of his former wives in a black-and-white photo among several people at an event.
"It's Marla,"&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;said in the deposition, referring to his second wife Marla Maples. Previously&nbsp;Trump&nbsp;had said he could not have raped&nbsp;Carroll&nbsp;because she was "not my type."
(Reporting by Jack Queen and Luc Cohen in New York; Additional reporting by Jonathan Stempel, Nathan Layne, Jarrett Renshaw, Jasper Ward, Eric Beech and Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Will Dunham, Noeleen Walder and Howard Goller)

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Trump sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll, must pay her $5 million, jury says