Trump offers DNA for rape accusers to test, lawyer says

Former US President Donald Trump is ready to release a DNA sample to compare to stains on the dress of a woman who has accused him of rape – under certain conditions, his lawyer says.

Attorney Joseph Tacopina wrote to a Manhattan federal court judge that Trump will provide the sample as long as attorneys for his accuser, columnist E. Jean Carroll, provide missing pages from a DNA report on the dress.

Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, called the offer a disingenuous attempt to delay an April trial and disadvantage potential jurors.

She handed the judge a letter saying the sudden offer of DNA after Trump refused to provide it for three years was a “legally reckless delaying tactic.”

“It’s about time he faced a jury,” Kaplan wrote, noting the October deadline for new facts to be brought to light in the trial.

According to a Thursday court filing, Trump and Carroll are both listed as their attorneys’ first possible witnesses at a trial scheduled to begin on April 24.

Carroll, 79, has sued Trump for defamation and rape, saying he turned a friendly encounter at a Manhattan luxury department store into a violent rape in late 1995 or early 1996.

She didn’t speak publicly about it until she published a book in 2019, What Do We Need Men For?

Trump has insisted the meeting never took place, even during an October deposition, and his attorney said the same thing in his most recent court filing.

Tacopina said Carroll and her attorneys were trying to gain a publicity advantage by claiming Trump’s DNA was on the dress she wore the night she said she was raped.

“Mr. Trump’s DNA is either on the dress or not,” he said.

Tacopina said Carroll’s attorneys declined to produce a dozen pages of the DNA report they received because “she knows his DNA isn’t on the dress because the alleged sexual assault never happened.”

Kaplan said Carroll decided to go to court without a protracted battle over DNA evidence after Trump repeatedly refused to provide a sample.

“There is no DNA evidence in this case and none will be brought to trial,” Kaplan wrote.

Instead, her client “collected strong evidence that Trump sexually assaulted her” without the sample, Kaplan said.

The attorney said a report from an expert showed unidentified male DNA was present on the dress Carroll was wearing when she met Trump, but she said it was not an isolated sample of male DNA, it was one DNA concoction that would require complex analysis if the judge allowed the matter to be reopened before a trial.