Is 'likely responsible' the same as 'guilty'?
To be honest, I struggled with that definition and that choice of words was mine. I originally wrote "guilty" in my opening sentence, but then checking the wording carefully in all the US news outlets in the immediate aftermath of the verdict, they were all using the phrase "liable" and the presenter of the BBC news coverage I watched was very precise about spelling out the difference - because it is a civil case not a criminal one, they were avoiding the term "guilty".
I don't know the exact wording in US statutes, but it's similar to the UK where the criminal standard has to be "proved beyond reasonable doubt" to declare a guilty verdict, whereas civil cases only have to be "on the balance of probabilities" to find against someone.
But of course, while technically in law that may be the case, in practice that's nonsense: if you're found "liable" in a case brought by someone claiming you committed a sexual assault, that's essentially saying you did it. And I notice that now, hours later, more news sources are using the word "guilty" in their headlines. Perhaps they were waiting to double-check with their legal teams first!
Is this genuine, or is it politically-motivated by Trump's many enemies?
I don't know, but one US lawyer and former federal prosecutor that I saw interviewed said that any claim by Trump's legal team to have the verdict declared biased and overturned could be made more difficult given that the jury did not find against him on all counts. They threw out the claim of rape. However, it appears that it came down to them finding Trump a less credible and believable witness than Carroll (not surprisingly, in my view!)