Ask E. Jean: A federal jury in Manhattan took only 2 ½ hours yesterday to find Donald Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation in the lawsuit brought against him by former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. The jury did not find that Trump had committed actual rape as Carroll had claimed.

  The jury also found that the 76-year-old Trump defamed Carroll when he posted a statement on his Truth Social website in October, calling her case “a complete con job” and “a Hoax and a lie.”

  Carroll was awarded $5 million, but Trump is likely to appeal and he has a reputation for not paying his debts anyway. She was smiling but did not speak to reporters when she left the courthouse.

  Trump’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, called it a “strange verdict.” He said, “This was a rape claim, this was a rape case all along and the jury rejected that, made other findings.” But it wasn’t just rape. It was that plus sexual assault and defamation of character. Carroll testified at trial that in the late 1990s Trump shoved her against a wall and raped her in a dressing room at the Manhattan luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman. 

  Whether this verdict does any damage to Trump’s quest to return to the presidency has to play out. He posted on his Truth Social website, “I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHO THIS WOMAN IS. THIS VERDICT IS A DISGRACE – A CONTINUATION OF THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!”

Liar Liar: New York Rep. George Santos, who fabricated a resume and lied his way onto a seat in Congress, has been charged with federal crimes and is due in court as soon as today, several news outlets report.

  The exact charges have not been disclosed, but the funny business connected to Santos includes violations of campaign spending laws, hundreds of thousands of dollars in unexplained spending, and a long list of campaign expenditures for $199.99, just one cent below the reportable limit.

  Santos has even been reported to have stolen from a fund established to pay for surgery on a homeless veteran’s dog.

  CNN’s Anderson Cooper last night described Santos as “an admitted resume fabricator, serial liar, Jewish impersonator, and alleged dog swindler.” 

The War Room: Arman Soldin, 32, a French video journalist working for Agence France-Presse, was killed by rocket fire near the town of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine, becoming the 17^th journalist to die covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Channel Change: Fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he’s starting a new show on Twitter. “We will be bringing some other things, too, which we’ll tell you about,” he said in a video announcement. “But for now, we’re just grateful to be here.”

  A video Carlson posted to Twitter last month just days after his firing, attracted more than 80 million views, according to Twitter’s public view counts, which may have convinced Carlson that he’s got a streaming audience waiting to see him.

Murder, She Wrote: After her husband died last year, Kouri Richins of the little mountain town of Kamas, Utah, wrote a children’s book on grief. Now she’s charged with murdering her husband with a lethal dose of fentanyl at their home. 

  Prosecutors say that Richins called authorities in the middle of the night in March 2022 to report that her husband, Eric Richins, was “cold to the touch.” The mother of three told the cops that she had made her husband a vodka drink to celebrate him selling a home and then went to tend one of their children. She said that when she returned her husband was unresponsive. 

 The medical examiner later found five times the lethal dosage of fentanyl in his system.

  The name of her children’s book is “Are you with me?”

The Obit Page: Vida Blue, who in 1971 with the Oakland Athletics threw an unhittable fastball and became baseball’s hottest player, has died at 73. No cause was given by the Athletics, which announced his death.

  Blue was a lefty who in his first dozen games with the Athletics won eight in a row and threw five complete-game shutouts. By mid-season he was leading baseball in shutouts, wins, strikeouts, complete games, and earned-run average. He was only 22.

  Blue was paid only 15,000 that summer, the equivalent of about $112,000 today. He asked for $115,000 for the next season and ended up settling for $63,150, about $460,000 in today’s money.

  He had a bitter relationship with A’s owner Charles O. Finley, who offered Blue $2,000 to change his name to “Vida True Blue.” Blue told The NY Times in 1973. “That man has soured me on baseball. No matter what he does for me in the future, I’ll never forget that he treated me like a damn colored boy.”

The Spin Rack: President Biden and leaders of both parties in Congress met yesterday on the debt limit and budget without any evident movement from either side. They say they will meet again Friday. — California Sen. Diane Feinstein announced that she’s returning to Washington after a long case of shingles and that she will get on with the business of appointing federal judges with the Senate Judiciary Committee — CNBC announced that it’s paying out about $1 million for the exit of anchor and correspondent Hadley Gamble, who had claimed she was sexually harassed by former NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell. It’s too complicated to get into it, but let’s just say she’s not some doe-eyed intern and Shell, who resigned, is no innocent either. — Donald Trump is set to appear tonight in a CNN town hall in New Hampshire. It’s going to be high stakes for the show’s host, CNN’s rising star, Kaitlan Collins. — Actor Robert DeNiro has fathered his 7^th child at age 79.

Below the Fold: A petit basset griffon Vendéen named Buddy Holly won best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

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