Lawyers for a woman who accuses President Donald Trump of raping her in the 1990s are asking for a DNA sample, seeking to determine whether his genetic material is on a dress she says she wore during the alleged encounter.
The situation
Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll’s lawyers served notice to a Trump attorney Thursday for Trump to submit a sample on March 2 in Washington for “analysis and comparison against unidentified male DNA present on the dress.”
Credit: Craig Ruttle
Credit: Craig Ruttle
The black wool coat-style dress belongs to Carroll. She says she had it on during the alleged encounter with Trump. In November, her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, had the garment genetically tested.
A lab report with the legal notice says DNA found on the sleeves was a mix of at least four people, at least one of them male.
Several other people were tested and eliminated as possible contributors to the mix, according to the lab report, which was obtained by The Associated Press. Their names are redacted.
Previously
Carroll accused Trump last summer of raping her in a Manhattan luxury department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
In a New York magazine piece in June and a book published the next month, Carroll said she and Trump met by chance, chatted and went to the lingerie department for Trump to pick out a gift for an unidentified woman.
She said joking banter about trying on a bodysuit ended in a dressing room, where she said Trump reached under her black wool dress, pulled down her tights and raped her as she tried to fight him off, eventually escaping.
“The Donna Karan coatdress still hangs on the back of my closet door, unworn and unlaundered since that evening,” she wrote. She donned it for a photo accompanying the magazine piece.
Donald Trump denies encounter
Trump said in June that Carroll was “totally lying” and he had “never met this person in my life.”
"I'll say it with great respect: No. 1, she's not my type," Trump said.
While a 1987 photo shows them and their then-spouses at a social event, Trump dismissed it as a moment when he was “standing with my coat on in a line.”
“She is trying to sell a new book — that should indicate her motivation,” he said in one of various statements on the matter, adding that the book “should be sold in the fiction section.”
The Associated Press has sent a message to Trump's attorney seeking comment.
Defamation lawsuit
Carroll sued Trump for defamation in November, saying he smeared her and hurt her career as a longtime Elle magazine advice columnist by calling her a liar. She is seeking unspecified damages and a retraction of Trump’s statements.
Trump’s lawyer has tried to get the case thrown out.
A Manhattan judge declined to do so earlier this month, saying the attorney hadn’t properly backed up his arguments that the case didn’t belong in a New York court.
What’s at stake
Carroll’s lawyer, Kaplan, said it was “standard operating procedure” in a sexual assault investigation to request a DNA sample from the accused.
“As a result, we’ve requested a simple saliva sample from Mr. Trump to test his DNA, and there really is no valid basis for him to object,” she said.
While the notice is a demand, such demands often spur court fights requiring a judge to weigh in on whether they will be enforced.
Why now?
Carroll said she didn’t come forward for decades because she feared legal retribution from Trump and damage to her reputation, among other reasons. But when the #MeToo movement spurred reader requests for advice about sexual assault, she said, she decided she had to disclose her own account.
“Unidentified male DNA on the dress could prove that Donald Trump not only knows who I am, but also that he violently assaulted me in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman and then defamed me by lying about it and impugning my character," Carroll said in a statement Thursday.
She also tweeted about the case:
Recalling Bill Clinton
Trump, a Republican, isn’t the first president to face the prospect of a DNA test related to a woman’s dress.
Former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, underwent such a test during an independent counsel investigation into whether he had a sexual relationship with onetime White House intern Monica Lewinsky and then lied in denying it under oath.
After Clinton’s DNA was found on the dress, he acknowledged an "inappropriate intimate relationship" with Lewinsky.
Clinton was impeached by the House in December 1998 and later acquitted by the Senate.
— This report was compiled by ArLuther Lee for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
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