Trump Offers Deal to Provide DNA in Rape-Accuser’s Suit

(Bloomberg) -- Former President Donald Trump has offered to provide a DNA sample to E. Jean Carroll, the woman suing him for allegedly raping her in the 1990s, if she turns over pages he says are missing from a forensic report on the dress she claims she wore that day.

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Trump “is indeed willing to provide a DNA sample for the sole purpose of comparing it to the DNA found on the dress at issue, so long as the missing pages of the DNA Report are promptly produced prior to our client producing his DNA,” his lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, said in a Friday letter to US District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan.

According to Tacopina, Carroll’s lawyers have refused to turn over the last 12 pages of a 37-page DNA report done by a California crime lab at her request. Carroll submitted pages of the report indicating DNA from multiple people was found on the black Donna Karan coat dress which she said she kept after the alleged incident. But Tacopina suggested in his letter that Carroll already knew Trump was not among those people.

“Plaintiff would suffer no unfair prejudice or harm by the production of the full DNA Report,” Tacopina wrote. “Mr. Trump’s DNA is either on the dress or it is not. Why is Plaintiff now hiding from this reality? We surmise that the answer to that question is that she knows his DNA is not on the dress because the alleged sexual assault never occurred.”

Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Carroll, fired back late Friday, saying Carroll first sought Trump’s DNA in January 2020, only to have Trump “unequivocally” reject the request. “There is no DNA evidence in this case” and none would be introduced at trial, Kaplan said.

“At bottom, Trump’s motion is yet another bad faith and legally frivolous delay tactic,” Kaplan wrote, urging the judge to reject the former president’s request to reopen the taking of discovery and needlessly delay the case.

Trump to Testify

Trump has denied Carroll’s claim that he raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s. He said earlier Friday he plans to testify in his own defense at a trial in April over the defamation claim Carroll filed in 2019. The DNA offer relates to the more recent sexual battery suit she filed against him under the New York Adult Survivors Act, which temporarily lifts the time limit on sexual assault suits to allow decades-old claims to proceed.

The former president put himself at the top of a list of witnesses he plans to call for his side at the trial, which Kaplan set to start April 25 before a jury, according to a court filing late Thursday.

Carroll, a former Elle magazine advice columnist, went public with her allegations in 2019, claiming Trump assaulted her in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the 1990s. Trump, then president, accused her of fabricating the attack to sell a book.

Trump has already given sworn testimony in the case, calling Carroll a “whack job” and “liar” during a pre-trial deposition. During that Oct. 19 interview, he mistook a 1980s photograph of Carroll with an image of his ex-wife Marla Maples, according to a partially unsealed transcript.

Read More: Trump Confused Rape Accuser Carroll With Ex-Wife in Deposition

Carroll has proposed calling herself to testify in the case as well as two women she said she told about the alleged assault, according to the court filing.

In December, Carroll filed a partial transcript of her October testimony, showing Trump attorney Alina Habba elicited information about Carroll’s love life and emotional turmoil, as well as fresh details of the alleged assault in the 1990s. She had filed excerpts of both her deposition and Trump’s in support of arguments to expedite evidence-gathering in the case.

Read More: Trump Rape Accuser Carroll Pressed on Claims in Deposition

The case is Carroll v. Trump, 20-cv-7311, US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

(Updates with response from Carroll’s lawyer.)

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