Trump Is Willing to Provide DNA in Case Filed by Writer, His Lawyer Says
A lawyer for Donald J. Trump said on Friday that the former president was willing to provide a DNA sample as part of a lawsuit filed against him by the writer E. Jean Carroll, who has accused Mr. Trump of raping her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
In a motion filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Joseph Tacopina, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, wrote that the former president would submit the evidence in exchange for the production of what he said were missing pages from a report that Ms. Carroll, commissioned about genetic material gathered from a dress she says she was wearing when the incident occurred.
The sample, Mr. Tacopina wrote, would be for the “sole purpose of comparing it to the DNA found on the dress at issue.” He added that the filing was “not seeking to delay the trial date.”
In a response several hours later, Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, disagreed, saying the motion filed by Mr. Tacopina was a “bad-faith effort to taint the potential jury pool, upend this Court’s discovery orders, and delay these proceedings.”
Ms. Kaplan added that Mr. Trump had spent years “categorically refusing” to provide such evidence and had known about the DNA report for more than three years.
What to Know About E. Jean Carroll’s Accusations
Two lawsuits. E. Jean Carroll, a writer who says former President Donald J. Trump raped her in the mid 1990s, has filed two separate lawsuits against the former president. Here’s what to know:
Who is E. Jean Carroll and what does she claim? Ms. Carroll is a journalist and a onetime advice columnist for Elle magazine. She wrote about the alleged assault in a 2019 memoir, claiming that Mr. Trump had attacked her in the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan. The account was the most serious of several sexual misconduct allegations women have made against Mr. Trump, all of which he has denied.
How did Trump respond to her claims? After Ms. Carroll’s account appeared as an excerpt of her book in New York magazine, Mr. Trump emphatically denied her accusations, saying that she was “totally lying,” that the assault had never occurred and that he could not have raped her because she was not his “type.”
On what grounds is Ms. Carroll suing Mr. Trump for rape? In May, New York passed a law giving adult sexual assault victims a one-time opportunity to file civil cases, even if the statute of limitations has long expired. Ms. Carroll subsequently filed a lawsuit, accusing Mr. Trump of rape and seeking damages.
Why did she also sue him for defamation? In 2019, Ms. Carroll filed a defamation lawsuit against Mr. Trump in New York for making disparaging comments and branding her a liar after the publication of her memoir. On Oct. 19, the former president was questioned under oath in the case.
In her filing, Ms. Kaplan also accused Mr. Trump’s defense team of leaking information to The Daily Beast and The Independent in an effort to taint the potential jury pool for a trial in the case, which is set to begin in April.
The dueling filings on Friday were the latest developments in a three-year legal battle between Mr. Trump and Ms. Carroll, an author and former longtime Elle magazine columnist who accused him in a memoir of sexually assaulting her nearly 30 years ago in a dressing room at a Bergdorf Goodman department store.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly denied Ms. Carroll’s accusation, saying when she first made it that he had “never met this person in my life,” and calling her a liar intent on selling a book. In fall 2019, Ms. Carrollsued Mr. Trump, saying his statements had damaged her reputation and her career.
In the course of the defamation case — which has been mired in appeals — Ms. Carroll requested Mr. Trump’s DNA sample. Attached to the request was a laboratory report that detailed an examination of Ms. Carroll’s DNA and the dress and shoes she said she was wearing on the day in question.
The report also contained information about the DNA of five people who “possibly came into contact with the dress” during a photo shoot for the cover of a New York magazine issue that included an except of her memoir.
As the initial defamation suit worked its way through the courts, Ms. Carroll filed a battery claim against Mr. Trump in November under the provisions of a New York law, the Adult Survivors Act, that gives adults who say they were sexual assaulted a one-time, one year, window to sue those they say assaulted them even if their claims are beyond the statute of limitations.
In the filing on Friday, Mr. Tacopina said he and his colleagues on the defense team had noticed that the pages between 25 and 37 of Ms. Carroll’s DNA lab report— which appeared to include the report’s index — were missing and asked Ms. Carroll’s lawyers to provide them. Ms. Carroll’s lawyers, he said, had declined to do so.