Jurors in the civil rape trial of former President Donald Trump have been advised to use fake names with each other, as a security precaution to safeguard their identities, reported Business Insider on Tuesday.
"US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered last month that the jury deciding E. Jean Carroll's rape and defamation lawsuit against Trump would be anonymous, meaning their names will be kept secret and US Marshals will ferry them to and from the court each day from undisclosed locations," reported Ashley Collman. "Kaplan made the decision after expressing concerns that the jurors chosen to serve on the case could face 'harassment or worse' from Trump's supporters."
"The fewer people who know who you are, the better," Kaplan told the jury.
Carroll, an advice columnist, alleges that the former president raped her in the dressing room of a New York department store in the 1990s. She further alleges that Trump defamed her when he claimed her allegations were a "hoax" and said she was "not [his] type." Carroll writes in the suit that these comments "injured the reputation on which she makes her livelihood as a writer, advice columnist, and journalist."
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In addition to defamation, Carroll is also suing under a recently-passed New York law that allows sexual assault victims to file claims for the harm caused by the assault itself.
All of this comes as Trump defends against criminal accounting fraud charges in Manhattan, stemming from his alleged $130,000 hush payoff to adult film star Stormy Daniels, and as Fulton County, Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis prepares her decision whether to indict him in the ongoing election interference case in that state.
