Jury selected as Donald Trump’s civil rape trial begins in New York | Donald Trump

A federal court jury in New York was selected on Tuesday to hear evidence that Donald Trump raped the advice columnist E Jean Carroll nearly 30 years ago.

Jurors were expected to hear opening arguments from both sides on Tuesday afternoon and could begin listening to witness testimony before the end of the day.

Carroll alleges Trump pinned her against the wall of a New York department store changing room and sexually assaulted her in late 1995 or early the following year as they shopped together.

She brought the case last year under a New York law opening a one-year window for adult victims of sexual assault to file civil cases after the statute of limitations has expired.

Carroll did not comment to reporters when she arrived at the courthouse on Tuesday.

The case is so far the only one to come to court among more than a dozen allegations of rape, groping and other sexual assaults against Trump as well as accusations that he walked unannounced into women’s dressing rooms at beauty pageants.

Trump is not expected to attend the trial after his lawyers said he would not testify. Although Carroll’s lawyers could ask the judge to put Trump on the stand as a hostile witness, they have said they do not intend to do so.

Trump’s legal team proposed to ask potential jurors if they thought “the #MeToo movement has gone too far” and about their views of sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh during the Senate hearing into his appointment to the supreme court.

Carroll’s lawyers sought to identify potential jurors who followed Trump on his platform, Truth Social. They also wanted to ask if any believed Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Legal experts said the judge, Lewis Kaplan, was likely to limit overtly political questions.

A jury of six men and three women was chosen. They were selected after questioning about their news-watching habits and more. They were asked if they made political donations, supported right- or leftwing groups, used Truth Social, read Carroll’s former column in Elle magazine, if they had seen Trump’s former reality show, The Apprentice, and whether these and other matters would make it difficult to be fair.

Kaplan has ordered members of the jury not be identified in public because of the “significant risk” they could be subject to pressure and targeted for “retaliation and harassment from persons unhappy with any verdict that might be returned”.

Ranging in age from 26 to 66, the group includes a janitor, a physical therapist and people who work in security, healthcare collections, a library and a high school. One said she followed news by watching “everything”. Another said he didn’t follow news at all.

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The jurors are expected to hear from two other women who say they were sexually assaulted by Trump.

Jessica Leeds is set to testify that Trump tried to put his hand up her skirt on a 1979 flight on which the two were assigned neighboring seats. Natasha Stoynoff, a former People magazine writer, will testify that Trump pinned her against a wall and forcibly kissed her at his Florida mansion when she went there in 2005 to interview him and his then pregnant third wife, Melania Trump.

Jurors will also see the infamous 2005 Access Hollywood video in which Trump is heard making misogynistic remarks about women, including claiming to grab women by the genitals without asking.

Carroll accuses Trump of assaulting her at the Bergdorf Goodman store after he asked for help choosing a present for a friend. She said he pressured her to try on a see-through bodysuit then entered the dressing room with her. Carroll said she pushed Trump away after he forcibly kissed her.

“Then he pressed her against the wall once more, pulled down her tights, and forcibly raped her for several minutes until she managed to push him off and fled the store,” according to the lawsuit.

Among witnesses expected to be called by Carroll are two women who say she swiftly told them about the alleged assault. Lisa Birnbach and Carol Martin have since corroborated the account.

Carroll said she did not file a complaint with police because she “was in shock and did not wish to think of herself as a rape victim”. She said Martin advised her to “keep quiet” because Trump was a powerful businessman who would “bury” her.

Carroll changed her mind when Trump was elected president in 2016 and after the accusations against the film producer Harvey Weinstein that led to the #MeToo movement. She wrote a book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, detailing abuse of one kind or other by a number of men, including Trump. Excerpts were published in New York magazine.

Trump called the allegations “a complete con job” and said Carroll’s book “should be sold in the fiction section”.

“She completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City department store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her. It is a hoax and a lie,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Carroll has two cases against Trump. The first accuses him of libeling her when he denied her accusations. That case has yet to come to trial.

The Associated Press contributed reporting