But U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, in his 24-page ruling Monday, said the jury found Trump raped Carroll “as the term is understood more broadly.”
He wrote that while the jury concluded Trump was not liable for rape according to New York penal code — which requires proof of forceful penetration involving the attacker’s genitals — the jurors’ conclusion that he was liable for sexually abusing her by forcefully inserting his fingers was an “implicit determination that Mr. Trump digitally raped her.”
“Ms. Carroll’s statements are ‘substantially true,'” Kaplan wrote.