MANHATTAN (CN) — A federal judge on Monday put an end to the defamation counterclaim brought by Donald Trump against E. Jean Carroll, seeking redress from the writer who proved to a New York jury that Trump was liable for sexually abusing her.

Carroll says that, decades ago, Trump raped her in a fitting room at the famed Bergdorf Goodman department store, first detailing the attack in her 2019 book and an excerpt published in New York Magazine ahead of publication.

Trump’s denial of the accusation teed up Carroll’s defamation claims against Trump. In May, Carroll won a $5 million jury verdict after proving battery and defamation claims at a weeklong trial in the Southern District of New York.

On the stand, as she did in her book, Carroll, a longtime advice columnist at Elle magazine, described a friendly shopping encounter that turned monstrous when Carroll and Trump made their way toward the fitting room: Trump shut the door and pushed her against the wall. Then he shoved first his fingers, then his penis, inside of her.

Legally, the two acts of sexual violence are distinct — and jurors ultimately checked the box on sexual abuse, but not rape, for the battery count.

Trump sought to exploit that discrepancy when bringing a defamation complaint of his own, citing Carroll’s book excerpt, social media posts and television interviews, accusing her of “an intent to significantly and spitefully harm and attack [Trump’s] reputation, as these false statements were clearly contrary...

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