A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Donald Trump is liable for making defamatory statements against E. Jean Carroll in 2019, leaving it to a jury to determine how much the former president should pay in damages.

In May, a Manhattan jury found Trump liable for battery and defamation after Carroll, a former New York City gossip columnist, accused the former president of sexually assaulting her in a department store in the 1990s. The jury in that case found that Trump defamed Carroll when he called her allegations a “hoax” on his social-media platform, Truth Social in 2022. At the time, the panel awarded Carroll a $5 million judgment at the time in combined damages.

The second Carroll case revolves around statements Trump made three years earlier when the former journalist first came forward with her story.

The presiding justice, Lewis Kaplan, ruled in his Wednesday order that the earlier guilty verdict will inform the second defamation lawsuit initially set to begin on January 15, 2024, in the Big Apple. The date coincides with the crucial Iowa Republican Caucus vote.

The “jury found that Mr. Trump knew that his statement that Ms. Carroll lied about him sexually assaulting her for improper and ulterior purposes was false or that he acted with reckless disregard to whether it was false,” Kaplan wrote in a legal filing. “Whether Mr. Trump made the 2019 statements with actual malice raises the same issue.”