E. Jean Carroll, Who Accused Donald Trump of Rape, Is Seeking His DNA in a Lawsuit

E. Jean Carroll, the writer who accused President Donald Trump of rape, is seeking his DNA in a lawsuit against him.

Carroll accused Trump of raping her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in New York City in the mid-1990s. Her lawyers are seeking to determine whether his genetic material is on a dress she says she wore during the encounter.

According to the Associated Press, her 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.”

Carroll filed a defamation suit against Trump in November after the president denied her allegation. He claimed that Carroll is "not [his] type," that the incident "never happened," and denied even meeting her, despite there being a photo of the two of them together years before the alleged encounter. When the defamation suit was filed, Carroll's lawyer tested the black dress she wore, and a lab report with the legal notice says DNA found on the sleeves was a mix of at least four people, at least one of them male. 

AP obtained a lab report that found that several other people (whose names were redacted) were tested and eliminated as possible contributors to the mix.

“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," Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Carroll, said in a statement to InStyle. "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. As a result, we’ve requested a simple saliva sample from Mr. Trump to test his DNA, and there really is no valid basis for him to object."

A lawyer for Trump did not immediately respond to InStyle's request for comment.

“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. "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."

In a piece for New York magazine's The Cut last summer, Carroll alleged that Trump forcibly assaulted her in a dressing room. 

"The next moment, still wearing correct business attire, shirt, tie, suit jacket, overcoat, he opens the overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me," she wrote.

"The Donna Karan coatdress still hangs on the back of my closet door, unworn and unlaundered since that evening," she added.

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