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E. Jean Carroll (L) and Donald Trump (R) (image of Carroll via Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for Glamour; image of Trump via JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)
Former President Donald Trump is willing to provide his DNA to see whether it matches the sample found on E. Jean Carroll’s dress, his new lawyer claimed on Friday.
The about-face falls nearly three years after Carroll’s original request — and comes with a couple of conditions.
“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,” Trump’s new attorney Joseph Tacopina wrote in a blockbuster three-page motion.
Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan responded Friday, calling it a “frivolous delay tactic” and belated effort to taint the jury pool.
“Carroll sought Trump’s DNA early in the case and he refused to provide it,” she said. “He persisted in that refusal for well over a year and in both state and federal court. Carroll therefore chose to prove her case using alternative evidence — and has amassed powerful proof that Trump sexually assaulted her. Now that discovery has closed, Carroll is at long last entitled to present her proof to a jury at trial.”
On Feb. 18, 2020, Carroll’s legal team first made the demand shortly after her litigation began in Manhattan Supreme Court, asking the then-president to “submit to a physical examination” in order to provide a “buccal, blood or skin cell sample.” Carroll has argued that such a sample would help prove her claims that Trump raped her in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman store in the mid-1990s.
“Notably, this filing garnered substantial media attention,” Tacopina wrote. “In fact, Plaintiff has stated publically that she already has DNA from Mr. Trump, which necessarily implies that his DNA is on the dress in question.”
Tacopina quotes her taunting the then-president on Twitter, a little more than a year after the filing.
Cyrus Vance, the Manhattan District Attorney, has Trump’s taxes.
Fani Willis, the Georgia Prosecutor, has Trump’s phone call.
Mary Trump has her grandfather’s will.
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And I have the dress.
Trump is basically in deep shit.
— E. Jean Carroll (@ejeancarroll) February 25, 2021
“Cyrus Vance, the Manhattan District Attorney, has Trump’s taxes,” Carroll tweeted at the time. “Fani Willis, the Georgia Prosecutor, has Trump’s phone call. Mary Trump has her grandfather’s will. And I have the dress. Trump is basically in deep s—.”
Trump’s lawyers say that Carroll is “using the DNA Report to litigate this case in public and imply that Mr. Trump’s DNA is on the dress.”
“Therefore, Plaintiff’s expert was not merely hired by Plaintiff to consult, but was hired to publically state in a court filing that Plaintiff has DNA evidence against Mr. Trump,” Tacopina wrote. “Or at the very least, Plaintiff has waived such protection by affirmatively using the DNA Report to seek DNA from Mr. Trump and then making public comments about it.”
Tacopina claims that there are missing pages to the DNA report attached to Carroll’s original demand, and he offered to have his client supply the DNA if he receives those pages.
“Mr. Trump’s DNA is either on the dress or it is not,” Tacopina wrote. “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.”
Carroll’s attorney did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
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