Donald Trump ‘raped, groped’ ex-columnist E. Jean Carroll, US civil trial hears

Former US president Donald Trump went on trial on Tuesday over a 30-year rape claim filed by E. Jean Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine.

Trump raped Carroll and later ‘ridiculed’ her with defamatory comments, a US court hearing a lawsuit against the ex-president was told.

The civil trial, expected to last two weeks, will focus on an alleged encounter between Carroll and Trump more than two decades ago at the Bergdorf Goodman store.

Carroll, 79, earlier claimed that Trump sexually assaulted her in a changing room at the luxury Bergdorf Goodman department store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in the mid-1990s.

Trump first asked for advice playfully on buying women's lingerie from the former columnist and then attacked her, she claimed.

"The moment they were inside (the dressing room) everything changed. Suddenly nothing was fun. Trump was almost twice her size," Carroll's lawyer Shawn Crowley told the Manhattan court.

Trump has denied the allegations. His lawyer in the opening arguments of the much-anticipated proceedings said that Carroll was motivated by money and fame.

The trial, which is not criminal in nature, is part of a barrage of legal challenges that could jeopardise Trump's 2024 run for a second presidential term.

It comes just weeks after Trump's historic arraignment on criminal charges related to a hush-money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels, making him the first sitting or former president to have ever been charged with a crime.

The former president pleaded not guilty to 34 counts related to the payment made just before the 2016 presidential election.

Trump also faces investigation over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia, his alleged mishandling of classified documents and his involvement in US Capitol attack.

Carroll who was present in the court today, had first made the allegation in an excerpt from her book published by New York Magazine in 2019. She sued Trump for defamation but was unable to include the rape claim.

Trump responded then by saying he has never met her, that she was "not my type" and that she was "totally lying."

However, after a new law took effect in November 2022 in New York that allowed victims of sexual assault a one-year window to sue their alleged abusers, decades after the attacks, she filed a new suit that accused Trump of "forcibly raping and groping" her.

It also included defamation for a post that Trump made on his Truth Social platform in October where he denied the alleged rape and referred to Carroll as a "complete con job."

"He went on the attack. He ridiculed her. He destroyed her," her lawyer said seeking unspecified damages for “significant pain and suffering, lasting psychological and pecuniary harms, loss of dignity and self-esteem, and invasion of her privacy.”

It also asks that Trump retract his comments.

Joe Tacopina, representing Trump, said there was no evidence of the assault and that Carroll was "abusing the system for money, for political reasons, and for status."

Around a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. He has denied all the allegations and has never been prosecuted over any of them. If Trump loses, it will be the first time he has ever been held legally liable for an allegation of sexual assault.