The United States President-elect, Donald Trump, has lost his bid to overturn the $5 million judgement against him in the case in which he was found guilty of sexually assaulting writer Jean Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s and later defamed her.

In May 2023, a Manhattan jury found that Mr Trump sexually assaulted former magazine writer Ms Carroll in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan nearly 30 years ago but could not reach a guilty verdict on the allegation of rape, as she had long claimed.

Following the judgement, Mr Trump filed an appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, faulting the decision of the lower court in Manhattan that permitted two women who previously accused Mr Trump of sexual assault to testify in the trial.

Meanwhile, the appeals court has now rejected Mr Trump’s request for a new trial, stating that “Mr Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings,” the court said in its opinion, which affirmed the verdict of the lower court.

Mr Trump was re-elected with an “overwhelming mandate,” Steven Cheung, Mr Trump’s chief campaign spokesman, said in a statement regarding the latest judgement.

He added that the American people “demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the witch hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll hoax, which will continue to be appealed.”