Trump’s DNA will not be used in the suit of the writer who accused him of rape, judge rules

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Former President Donald Trump’s DNA will not be used as evidence in the civil lawsuit brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, who claims Trump raped her in a New York City department store in the 1990s, the judge presiding over the case said. on Wednesday.

In a 21-page ruling, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan said the time for new evidence in the case had passed and the matter would proceed to trial without Trump’s DNA sample.

The Carrolls’ lawyers initially asked Trump to turn over a sample of her DNA in January 2020 to see if her genetic material was present in the clothing she said she wore during the alleged encounter. The request will be used for analysis and comparison against the unidentified male DNA present on the clothing, they said.

Trump’s lawyers have repeatedly denied the requests, arguing in court filings that Carroll “has not demonstrated a reasonable basis for such an intrusive request.”

“Furthermore, the request is highly prejudicial due to chain of custody concerns and violates the defendants’ privacy rights, which are particularly sensitive because he is a former president,” said Trump’s attorney Alina Habba last year.

Trump’s new lawyer, Joe Tacopina, revived the issue in a letter to Kaplan last week, offering to turn over a sample of Trump’s DNA to Carroll’s lawyers if they first provided more information. from a DNA report found on the clothing.

Kaplan rejected that proposal in his ruling Wednesday, noting that it came well after both sides submitted all their evidence in the case, which is set to go to trial in April.

“There is no justification for such treatment,” Kaplan wrote, noting that Carroll turned over the DNA report more than three years ago. If Trump’s lawyers wanted information from the appendix that was not included in the report, they should have asked long ago.

“The effort is too late,” Kaplan found. But he also said Carroll didn’t deserve a DNA sample from Trump.

“His counsel had multiple opportunities” to “move to compel Mr. Trump to submit a DNA sample,” he said. “If they did, they almost certainly got it.”

“They obviously decided to go to trial without it,” he added.

Kaplan also questioned how important the evidence was, noting that there was no evidence of any sperm cells on the clothing. So even if there is a fight, “it will not prove or disprove Ms. Carroll’s rape allegation,” he said. And if there is no match, it “doesn’t disprove Ms. Carroll’s accusation.”

“The alleged rape could have occurred without sufficient quantity or quality of Mr. Trump’s DNA remaining on the clothing from the mid-1990s,” he said.

Trump denied attacking Carroll, 79, and called her a “whack job” who was “not my type” in his deposition in the case even as he also mistook her for ex-wife Marla Maples when she was shown the 1990s Carroll’s photo during the deposition, according to court documents.

Attorneys for Trump and Carroll declined to comment on Wednesday’s decision.

In a letter to the judge last week, Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, called Trump’s eleventh-hour offer to turn over his DNA “another bad faith and legally meaningless delay tactic .”

He noted that previous attempts to obtain Trump’s DNA had been delayed by his appeals on other issues that slowed the case to a crawl and said his team made a strategic decision to proceed without it. .

Carroll was “faced with a choice: nearly three years into the trial, he could engage in a protracted battle over an unprecedented request to obtain a former president’s DNA a request that Trump has repeatedly resisted, vowed to keep fighting, and will inevitably be a major issue in this court” and in subsequent appeals, the letter said. “Or he could pivot, take Trumps deposition, and work toward the trial date already set by the court, armed with the overwhelming evidence already available to him.

“He chose the latter course so that he could prove his case without further delay a goal that is especially important in light of the Trumps who have shown a pattern of exploding court deadlines and escaping accountability,” the letter continued.

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