Donald Trump’s alleged rape case begins in civil court.

The jury selection phase of a civil trial involving allegations that former US President Donald Trump sexually assaulted a prominent former American columnist thirty years ago began on Tuesday.

E. Jean Carroll, a writer, claims that Trump assaulted her sexually in a New York department shop and then slandered her after she made the complaint public years later.

The charges have been frequently refuted by Trump, who is dealing with a slew of legal issues that could imperil his bid for a second presidential term in 2024.

The trial, which is the result of a lawsuit Carroll brought against Trump, began only a few weeks after Trump was famously arraigned on allegations of making a criminal hush-money payment to a porn star.

In 1995 or 1996, according to Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist, Trump sexually assaulted her in the dressing room of the opulent Bergdorf Goodman department store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

The now-79-year-old woman claimed the assault happened after Trump requested her opinion on what to get as a gift for a woman who wears lingerie.

Carroll initially made the claim in an extract from her book that was published by New York Magazine in 2019. Carroll was present in court for the beginning of the proceedings on Tuesday.

Then, in his reply, Trump claimed that he had never met her, that she was “not my type,” and that she was “totally lying.”

Carroll first filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump in 2019, but the statute of limitations for the claimed conduct had already passed, so Carroll was unable to add the rape accusation.

However, a new legislation that went into effect in New York in November of last year granted victims of sexual assault a one-year window to file lawsuits against their alleged abusers decades after crimes may have taken place.

Carroll’s attorneys have brought a new lawsuit against Trump, accusing him of battery “when he forcibly raped and groped” her.

Additionally, it contained libel for a statement Trump made in October on his Truth Social platform, in which he disputed the claimed rape and called Carroll a “complete con job.”