Writer who accused Trump of rape seeks DNA sample

Lawyers for columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accused President Trump of raping her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s, are seeking to collect DNA evidence from the president.

Carroll’s attorneys sent a notice to a Trump attorney Thursday asking that the president submit a sample for “analysis and comparison against unidentified male DNA” found on the dress Carroll wore on the day of the alleged incident.

The advice columnist for Elle Magazine filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump in November after he denied her allegation, saying she was “totally lying” and he had “never met this person in my life.”

Since then, the dress Carroll was wearing was tested for DNA and determined to have the DNA of four people on it, at least one of them male, according to a lab report accompanying the notice from Carroll’s attorneys.

“After Trump sexually assaulted me, I took the black dress I had been wearing and hung it in my closet,” Carroll said in a statement to The Hill on Thursday. “I only wore it once since then and that was at the photoshoot for the New York Magazine article about my book. 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.”

The Associated Press first reported the request for a DNA sample.

Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said DNA testing is “standard operating procedure” in cases of sexual assault and Trump has “no valid basis for him to object.”

“This case turns on whether Donald Trump lied when he said that he had not sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll and, in fact, had never even met her,” Kaplan said in a statement obtained by The Hill. “Testing unidentified male DNA on the dress she wore during that assault has become standard operating procedure in these circumstances given the remarkable advances in DNA technology, particularly where, as is the case here, other potential contributors have been excluded.”

The notice from Carroll’s attorneys gave Trump a March 2 deadline to provide a saliva sample, though the order is likely to be contested in court.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.