Jurors in the Trump rape case were advised to use fake names with each other to preserve their anonymity

• E. Jean Carroll's rape and defamation lawsuit against former President Trump went to trial Tuesday.
• The judge in the case advised jurors to use fake names with each other.

The judge presiding over a rape claim trial involving former President Donald Trump advised potential jurors on Tuesday to use fake names with each other so they could preserve their anonymity.

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.

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 jury was selected just after 1 p.m. on Tuesday, after being narrowed down from a pool of about 50.

Before the jury was chosen, Kaplan addressed the group and suggested that they use fake names with each other to preserve their anonymity.

"The fewer people who know who you are, the better," Kaplan said.

And while jurors are free to say they are serving on a jury to their family and friends, Kaplan said it would be a "good idea" not to tell those people what specific case they're working on.

The lawsuit stems from Carroll's allegation that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s.

She's suing him for the alleged act itself, and for defamation — for his comments calling her story a "hoax and a lie" in a post on Truth Social in October.

While Carroll says she told two friends shortly after the alleged assault, she never went public with the story until June 2019, in an essay for New York magazine.

When Trump loudly denied her claim in statements to the press — saying Carroll was not his "type" and that she made up the story to sell her memoir — Carroll sued him for defamation.

In her lawsuit, Carroll says that Trump's comments have "injured the reputation on which she makes her livelihood as a writer, advice columnist, and journalist."