Hi everyone it's 4 o'clock in New York I'm Ali Velshi in for Nicole

Wallace if you want proof that the 2024 election is like no other before it

with a Republican primary dominated by an ex president who has centered his candidacy around

his legal woes.

Look no further than what is happening today.

This morning, Donald Trump, fresh off a decisive win

in the Iowa caucuses, was at a federal courthouse

in Manhattan as the defendant in a second defamation trial brought by the writer

E. Jean Carroll and this time there's no question of whether Trump defamed her

Judge Lewis Kaplan has already ruled that Trump is liable for

remarks that he made in 2019 mocking Carol's claim that he sexually

assaulted her in a chance encounter at a department store dressing room in the 1990s and

Trump is not allowed to dispute Carol's account. The question now is how much a

jury should award a gene Carol in damages for those comments.

Opening statements are currently underway.

We're going to have a live report from the courthouse when the trial wraps from the day.

But here's what's happened so far.

Donald Trump was in the courtroom alongside his lawyer Alina Haba, as well as E. Jean Carroll and her attorneys.

It was the first time the two were in the same room in decades.

The first order of business was jury selection and the complications of a trial

with what is perhaps the most famous defendant in the world was immediately clear.

NBC News reports, Judge Kaplan asked the potential jurors if anyone believed the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

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