WASHINGTON Former U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday filed a notice of appeal after a federal jury in Manhattan on Tuesday found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, and awarded her $5 million in damages.

Carroll, 79, sued Trump, 76, in 2022 with her allegation that he raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s, and then defamed her by denying it happened. Following a two-week trial, the jury found Trump liable in the civil case for abuse and defamation but not rape, after just under three hours of deliberations.

Trump's lawyer Joseph Tacopina had previously said he would appeal the verdict. His notice of appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was filed hours after U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan issued a ruling awarding Carroll the judgment and closing the case.

In a televised town hall on Wednesday, Trump made several disparaging comments about Carroll that elicited applause and laughter from the audience of New Hampshire Republicans and independent voters who plan to vote in the state's Republican primary.

(Reporting by Jasper Ward and Luc Cohen; Editing by Caitlin Webber and Grant McCool)