A federal court in New York today upheld the initial ruling requiring Donald Trump to pay $5 million in damages to E. Jean Carroll, after jurors determined that the president-elect was responsible for the sexual assault and subsequent defamation of the former columnist.

The verdict was issued by the three-member Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.

The original ruling, handed down in May 2023, concerned an incident allegedly taking place around 1996 in the dressing rooms of Manhattan’s Bergdorf Goodman department store, where Carroll claimed Trump raped her, as well as an October 2022 post by the businessman on the Truth Social platform, in which he dismissed her allegations as a “hoax.”

While jurors at the Manhattan federal court did not find Trump guilty of rape, they awarded $2.02 million in damages for sexual assault and $2.98 million for defamation to the former Elle magazine columnist.

In a separate case, another jury in January ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million for defamation after he denied her claims in June 2019, stating they were false.

In both instances, Trump claimed he did not know Carroll, that she was “not his type,” and that she fabricated the rape allegation to promote her memoir. He has appealed both the $5 million and $83.3 million rulings.

These cases continue in court despite Trump being elected president for a second four-year term on November 5. In 1997, in a case involving then-President Bill Clinton, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that sitting presidents are not immune to civil lawsuits filed in federal courts for actions committed before taking office and unrelated to their official duties.

Trump’s attorneys argued that the $5 million damages decision should be overturned because the judge allowed jurors to hear testimony from two other women who accused the president-elect of inappropriate behavior. One accuser, businesswoman Jessica Leeds, claimed Trump groped her on an airplane in the late 1970s. The other, former People magazine journalist Natasha Stoynoff, alleged Trump kissed her against her will at his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2005.

Trump’s legal team also argued that the judge should not have allowed the jury to watch a 2005 video in which Trump vividly described how he gropes women.

Both trials were presided over by Judge Bill Clinton.