Trump offers deal to provide DNA in rape accuser’s suit

WASHINGTON – Former US President Donald Trump has offered to provide a DNA sample to Ms 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. 

Mr 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 Mr Tacopina, Ms 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.

Ms 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 Mr Tacopina suggested in his letter that Ms Carroll already knew Mr Trump was not among those people.

“Plaintiff would suffer no unfair prejudice or harm by the production of the full DNA report,” Mr 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.”

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

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

Mr Trump has denied Ms Carroll’s claim that he raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s. He said earlier on Friday he plans to testify in his own defence at a trial in April over the defamation claim Ms 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. BLOOMBERG