LIVE: Jury rejects rape claim, but finds Trump liable for battery

NEW YORK (AP) — Jurors rejected E. Jean Carroll’s rape claim against Donald Trump, but found him liable for battery in 1996 attack.

The details of the verdict were to be announced at 3 p.m. in a federal courtroom in New York City.

Word of the verdict emerged just a few hours after the jury began deliberating in the case, which alleges Trump raped Carroll in a luxury Manhattan department store in 1996.

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan read instructions on the law to the nine-person jury before the panel began discussing Carroll's allegations of battery and defamation shortly before noon.

Trump said he will not speak until after the trial, “but will appeal the Unconstitutional silencing of me ... no matter the outcome!”

Trump never attended the trial, which is in its third week, and rejected an invitation to testify, which the judge extended through the weekend even after Trump's attorney, Joe Tacopina, said Thursday that his client would not testify.

Tacopina told the jury in closing arguments Monday that Carroll's account is too far fetched to be believed. He said she made it up to fuel sales of a 2019 memoir in which she first publicly revealed her claims and to disparage Trump for political reasons.

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