Former US president Donald Trump has launched an appeal after a jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E Jean Carroll.
Ms Carroll sued Mr Trump in 2022, alleging he raped her in a dressing room in the mid-1990s, and then defamed her by denying it happened.
This week a Manhattan federal jury found Mr Trump liable in the civil case for abuse and defamation but not rape, after just under three hours of deliberations.
He was ordered to pay Ms Carroll $US5 million ($7.4 million) in damages.
Mr Trump's lawyer Joseph Tacopina previously said the former president was "very confident" that he had grounds for appeal.
He said one of the issues to be appealed was the inclusion in the trial of the notorious 2005 Access Hollywood video in which Mr Trump was captured on a hot mic speaking disparagingly about women and saying that celebrities can grab women sexually without asking because women let them do it.
The notice of appeal was filed hours after US District Judge Lewis Kaplan issued a ruling awarding Ms Carroll the judgement and closing the case.
CNN receives mixed reactions over hosting Trump's town hall
Mr Trump made several disparaging comments about Ms Carroll in a televised town hall meeting which was broadcast live on CNN earlier this week.
His comments elicited applause and laughter from the audience of New Hampshire Republicans and independent voters who plan to vote in the state's Republican primary.
The former president, who wants to run for the presidency in 2024, also continued to falsely insist that he won the 2020 election.
CNN chairman Chris Licht later praised host Kaitlan Collins for her "masterful performance", and said she asked tough questions in difficult circumstances.
"If someone was going to ask tough questions and have that messy conversation, that damn well should be on CNN," he said in a recording of an internal CNN meeting obtained by The Associated Press.
He also defended the decision to hold the town hall before a Trump-friendly crowd.
"While we all may have been uncomfortable hearing people clapping, that was also an important part of the story, because the people in that audience represent a large swathe of America," Mr Licht said.
"And the mistake the media made in the past is ignoring that those people exist. Just like you cannot ignore that President Trump exists."
Nielsen data showed the town hall averaged 3.1 million viewers, compared to the 707,000 who tuned in to CNN during the same time slot a night earlier.
But CNN political commentator Van Jones said he was sceptical that the town hall would help CNN's reputation in the long term, given the backlash.
He noted that most of the network's post-event commentary was highly critical of Mr Trump, likely alienating conservative viewers who had tuned in just to watch the former president.
Nick Arama, a writer for the conservative website RedState.com, criticised CNN's Gary Tuchman, who spoke with some of the audience members after Mr Trump's appearance.
Arama said Tuchman "didn't act as much like a moderator trying to get their opinion as a Democratic propagandist trying to impose his own opinion on them."
Meanwhile, critics from the left were unsparing, and said CNN should have predicted how chaotic the event would be.
"CNN should be ashamed of themselves. They have lost total control of this 'town hall' to again be manipulated into platforming election disinformation, defences of Jan 6th and a public attack on a sexual abuse victim. The audience is cheering him on and laughing at the host," Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.
Former CNN Washington bureau chief Frank Sesno said the event was a harbinger of the difficult coverage decisions "every news organisation needs to wrestle with because Donald Trump is not a normal candidate".
"You can't ignore him, but you can't give him carte blanche either," he said.
AP/Reuters/ABC
