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 encounter.
According to the Associated Press, 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.”
“The dress has been tested,” Carroll tweeted. ” We have the results.”
A lab report with the legal notice says DNA found on the sleeves of the black wool, coat-style dress was a mix of at least four people, at least one of them male.
Several other people have been tested and eliminated as possible contributors to the mix, according to the lab report obtained by the AP.
Carroll, 75, first went public with the allegation against Trump in June, before the release of her book “What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal,” which contains a description of the alleged assault.
Carroll said Trump — then a hotshot real estate mogul — attacked her in late 1995 or early 1996 inside a dressing room at the upscale Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan.
She said Trump knocked her head against a wall, pulled down her tights and briefly penetrated her before she pushed him off and sprinted out.
“The Donna Karan coatdress still hangs on the back of my closet door, unworn and unlaundered since that evening,” Carroll wrote in the book which was excerpted in New York magazine. Carroll wore the dress for a photo accompanying the magazine piece.
Trump denied the allegation and accused Carroll of inventing it to boost book sales. He said she was “totally lying,” and that he had”never met this person in my life.” He said Carroll was “not my type.”
But a 1987 photo shows them and their then-spouses at a social event. Trump has dismissed the photo, saying he was “standing with my coat on in a line.”
“She is trying to sell a new book — that should indicate her motivation,” Trump said at the time. He said Carroll’s book “should be sold in the fiction section.”
Carroll sued Trump 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.
Carroll has said she stayed silent for years fearing retribution from Trump. She said the #MeToo movement empowered her to come forward.
In 1998, Former President Bill Clinton gave a blood sample as part of an investigation into charges that he lied under oath about a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Like Carroll, Lewinsky had an unlaundered dress, a blue one, which was used to match Clinton’s DNA.
With News Wire Services
