NEW YORK A federal judge on Wednesday said the writer E. Jean Carroll's second defamation trial against Donald Trump will be limited to damages only, in a defeat for the former U.S. president.

Carroll accused Trump of defaming her by denying in June 2019 that he had raped her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan said a May jury verdict awarding Carroll $5 million after Trump defamed her in Oct. 2022 established that he made his 2019 statements with "actual malice," leaving only the issue of how much he should pay in damages.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York)