The verdict was read out in a Manhattan federal court on Tuesday afternoon, just hours after jurors began deliberating following a seven-day trial.

Carroll had accused the former president, who is seeking re-election in 2024, of sexually assaulting her in a New York City department store in the mid-1990s. She also alleged that Trump defamed her by dismissing her story – told in a 2019 memoir – as a “con job”.

The nine-member jury awarded about $5m in compensatory and punitive damages.