Nearly a month after former US President Donald Trump faced indictment in an alleged sexual offence case, another turbulence could haunt him again as a court is due to select a jury in a three-decade-old rape case. On Tuesday, jurors in the federal civil case heard a former advice columnist’s allegation of being attacked in a luxury department store dressing room.
According to Columnist E Jean Carroll, she met Trump while shopping around three decades ago. The 79-year-old columnist alleged Trump, at first, sought her advice in shopping for lingerie for another woman and added billionaire Trump then lunged at her, pinned her against a wall and assaulted her in a changing room.
Now, after nearly thirty years, Carroll will testify that what unfolded in a few minutes in a fitting room in 1996 “ had changed her life forever,” one of her lawyers, Shawn Crowley, said in an opening statement.
Trump denies any wrongdoings
Trump — who wasn’t in court but hasn’t ruled out testifying —- has called Carroll a “nut job” who fabricated the rape claim to sell her book. Defence attorney Joe Tacopina told jurors Tuesday that her story was wildly implausible and short of evidence.
He accused her of pursuing the case for money, status and political reasons, urging the jurors from heavily Democratic New York to put aside any animus they themselves might hold toward the Republican ex-president and ex-New Yorker.
"Nobody is above law"
“You can hate Donald Trump. That’s OK. But there’s a time and a secret place for that. It’s called a ballot box in an election. It’s not here in a court of law,” Tacopina told the six-man, three-woman panel. “Nobody’s above the law, but no one is beneath it.”
The trial comes a month after he pleaded not guilty in an unrelated criminal case surrounding payments made to bury accounts of alleged extramarital sex.
Carroll’s suit is a civil case, meaning that no matter the outcome, Trump isn’t in danger of going to jail. She is seeking unspecified monetary damages and a retraction of Trump's statements that she alleges were defamatory.
“She’s not my type", says Trump
Among his comments: “She’s not my type,” which her lawyers say was tantamount to calling her too unattractive to assault.
Jurors — whose names are being kept secret to prevent potential harassment — range in age from 26 to 66 and include a janitor, a physical therapist and people who work in security, health care collections, a library, a high school and other settings.
Carroll, 79, is expected to testify as soon as Wednesday that a chance encounter with Trump, 76, turned violent, and that he defamed her when responding to the rape allegations.
She says that after she ran into the future president at Manhattan’s Bergdorf Goodman on an unspecified spring Thursday evening in 1996, he invited her to shop with him for a woman’s lingerie gift before they teased one another to try on a bodysuit. Carroll says they ended up alone together in a store dressing room, where Trump pushed her against a wall and raped before she fought him off and fled.
Her suit argues that she was psychologically scarred by the alleged attack, and then subjected to an onslaught of hateful messages and reputational damage when Trump painted her as a liar.
“This case is Ms Carroll’s chance to clear her name, to pursue justice,” Crowley said.
(With inputs from AP)
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