Trump news today: E Jean Carroll civil rape trial will hear from second sexual assault accuser

A panel of 48 prospective jurors were brought into the courtroom under strict secrecy as the civil battery and defamation trial related to the alleged rape of author E Jean Carroll by Mr Trump in the mid-1990s began on Tuesday.

Jurors were told they would remain anonymous throughout the trial to protect them from harassment and the invasion of privacy by Judge Lewis Kaplan.

He instructed them not to tell their families which trial they were hearing, or even divulge their real names to one another.

“If you’re normally a Bill, maybe go by John,” he said.

Ms Carroll claims that Mr Trump raped her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in 1995 or 1996 and that he later defamed her in 2019 as president when he rejected her allegation.

The judge in charge of the trial that began on Tuesday 25 April ruled that Mr Trump’s attorneys had acted too late. Jurors are now set to hear about another incident which may give the appearance that the former president has a history of sexual assault.

Ms Carroll expanded her defamation lawsuit to include battery last year after the state of New York passed a law allowing victims a one-year period to sue their alleged attackers after the expiration of the statute of limitations.

Years after the alleged rape of Ms Carroll, a People magazine journalist was at Mar-a-Lago to interview Mr Trump and Melania Trump, whom he had recently married at the time.

Born in Detroit and raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the one-time Miss Indiana University beauty queen began pitching her ideas to magazines at the age of 12.

After graduating from college, she got her breakthrough by landing her first published article in Esquire, a “witty literary quiz she concocted” about Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald.

From there, writing assignments at Rolling Stone and Playboy began to “trickle in”, she told Indianapolis Monthly in 1996.

While living in Montana with her first husband Steve Byers and their dog, she came to New York City in 1983 to interview Fran Leibowitz for a cover article in Outside magazine.

Four more years? Joe Biden’s declaration that he’s running for a second term was widely expected, but, it has to be said, cannot be entirely welcomed.

America’s voters have repeatedly stated their preference that the next contest not be a rerun of the one in 2020, but it appears that they are to be presented once again with a choice between the two most famous senior citizens in the world. At least they are familiar faces, and their strengths and weaknesses very well known – the only differences being that they’re both a little older this time round, though not necessarily wiser.

Donald Trump has released a new attack ad on Ron DeSantis, claiming that he “saved” the Florida governor’s career.

Announcement

A dramatic voiceover reads: “Unfortunately instead of being grateful, DeSantis is now attacking the very man who saved his career. Isn’t it time DeSantis remembers how he got to where he is?” as a clip plays of Mr DeSantis teaching his young daughter to “build the wall” with toy blocks in a 2018 Trump campaign video.

According to a Wall Street Journal poll, Mr DeSantis is behind Mr Trump by 13 points (51-38 per cent).

Donald Trump aggressively attacked President Joe Biden and called him “the most corrupt president in American history” and making false claims in a statement and video after Mr Biden announced his 2024 re-election bid

Just ahead of his announcement on Monday evening, Mr Trump released a lengthy press release making multiple false claims about himself and Mr Biden.

Hours later on Tuesday, Mr Trump appeared in a video where he read his statement word-for-word.

Mr Trump accused Mr Biden of leading the US “to the very brink of World War III” as well as allowing “millions of illegal aliens” who Mr Trump claimed are “coming in from mental institutions and prisons” to attribute a lack of security to the president.

In a court filing last week, Mr Trump said he shouldn’t attend the trial as he doesn’t want to “burden” New York City.

In a letter to Manhattan federal court Judge Lewis Kaplan on Wednesday, Mr Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina said that the former president “wishes” to attend the civil trial beginning next week – but is concerned about the “logistical and financial burdens” of his attendance on “the courthouse and New York City”.

Ms Carroll meanwhile plans to attend the trial.

After Mr Trump’s lawyers made an 11th-hour attempt to once again postpone his long-delayed civil defamation and rape trial on the grounds that publicity surrounding his recent indictment necessitated a “cooling-off” period to ensure an impartial jury, Judge Kaplan said the one-month delay Mr Trump’s attorneys had asked for would have no impact on the potential jury pool in the case, which will be tried in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

“There is no reason to assume that a sufficient number of fair and impartial jurors cannot be found on April 25, 2023 or that it would be materially easier to find such jurors on May 23, 2023,” he said.

Last year, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law the Adult Survivors Act, which created a one-year suspension of statutes of limitations for rape and other civil claims arising from allegations of sexual misconduct.

The law allows sexual assault survivors to sue their attackers regardless of when the alleged assault may have taken place.

In November 2022, shortly after the bill signing, Ms Carroll filed a second lawsuit against Mr Trump for rape.

The new case accuses him of battery – and also adds a new defamation claim based on recent posts in which he called her a “con job”.

Both lawsuits are seeking monetary damages from the ex-president.

The former president has been accused of sexual assault by more than two dozen women, but this is the first time a jury will be asked to determine the claims in court.

Legal experts told The Independent that Mr Trump’s likely non-appearance in the civil battery and defamation trial in the US District Courthouse in lower Manhattan was a major gamble.

“The risk for Trump if he doesn’t testify is huge,” Jennifer Keller, who represented Kevin Spacey when he was found not liable of sexual battery by a jury in 2022, told The Independent.

“The jury will hear only one side of the story — the plaintiff’s. And the jurors may well conclude he’s afraid of showing up because he knows the allegations are true.”