Trial Opens In Rape Claim Against Trump

NEW YORK (AP) — A former advice columnist’s nearly 30-year-old rape claim against Donald Trump has gone to trial. The six-man, three-woman jury in E. Jean Carroll’s federal civil case got its first look Tuesday at her allegation that Trump raped her in 1996 in a luxury department store dressing room. The former president says nothing happened between them. Carroll says a chance encounter with Trump turned violent two decades before he became president. Trump says she fabricated the claim to sell a 2019 memoir. Trump wasn’t in court Tuesday and isn’t likely to testify, but his lawyers have not ruled it out.