US: Trump rape allegation by E Jean Carroll heads to civil trial

Former US president’s legal issues could threaten 2024 run for a second term in the White House.

Jury selection is scheduled to start on Tuesday in a civil trial pitting former US President Donald Trump against a prominent former American columnist who says he raped her in the 1990s.

E Jean Carroll, 79, says Mr Trump sexually assaulted her in a New York department store and then defamed her after she went public with the allegations years later.

Mr Trump, who is facing a number of legal issues that could threaten his 2024 run for a second term in the White House, denies the allegations.

The start of the trial comes just weeks after his historic arraignment on criminal charges related to an alleged hush-money payment made to an adult film star just before the 2016 election.

What is Trump accused of?

Ms Carroll, a former columnist for Elle magazine, says she was raped by Mr Trump in the changing room at the luxury Bergdorf Goodman department store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in the mid-1990s.

She said the attack came after Mr Trump asked her for shopping advice.

Ms Carroll first made the allegation in an excerpt from her book published by New York Magazine in 2019.

Mr Trump responded then by saying he never met Ms Carroll, that she was “not my type” and that she was “totally lying”.

But a new law took effect in New York in November last year that gives redress to victims of sexual assault decades after attacks may have occurred.

It gave sexual assault victims in the state a one-year window to sue their alleged abusers even when the abuse occurred long ago.

Lawyers for Ms Carroll filed a new suit that accused Mr Trump of battery “when he forcibly raped and groped” her.

The suit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for psychological harm, pain and suffering, loss of dignity and damage to her reputation.

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Mr Trump is not expected to testify, as Ms Carroll’s lawyers have said they do not intend to call him to the witness stand.

The trial is likely to last between one and two weeks.

Mr Trump became the first sitting or former president to be charged with a crime when he was arrested in the hush-money case earlier this month.

He is also being investigated over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the southern state of Georgia, his alleged mishandling of classified documents taken from the White House, and his involvement in the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.