E. Jean Carroll in the Supreme Court of the State of New York on March 4, 2020.
Alec Tabak Tribune News Service Getty Images
A New York federal judge on Wednesday rejected a conditional offer by former President Donald Trump to provide a DNA sample in a lawsuit accusing him of raping an author in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.
Judge Lewis Kaplan said that Trump’s offer, which came after a year of litigation in the E. Jean Carroll suit, was too late, it came after the end of the process to exchange evidence in the lawsuit.
The judge noted that the trial in the case, in which Trump is also accused of defaming Carroll while denying the claim, will begin in less than three months.
Kaplan also said that Trump had no justification to give the offer on the condition that Carroll’s lawyer ordered him to turn over the previously undisclosed attachment to the male DNA report found in the dress she had said she was wearing when Trump allegedly assaulted her.
The ruling means there will be no DNA evidence presented at the trial.
Joseph Tacopina, the attorney recently hired to represent Trump in the case, declined to comment on the decision.
Trump has so far refused to provide a DNA sample.
Kaplan’s order Wednesday speculated that Trump’s “patently untimely request for an attachment indicates either a tactical shift or just an afterthought.”
He said one possible explanation is that Trump’s lawyers initially decided not to raise the appendix request for the past three years out of concern that Carroll’s lawyers would “renew the demand for Mr. Trump’s DNA.”
But another possible explanation is that Trump’s lawyers have “failed to read the report carefully for three years and thus did not notice the lack of attachments,” the judge wrote.
“But whatever the explanation, the effort was delayed,” Kaplan wrote.
The judge noted that Carroll will not have the right now to take a DNA sample from Trump, as the process of exchanging evidence, known as discovery, has ended.
“His counsel has had numerous opportunities in two of the two related cases to move to compel Mr. Trump to submit a DNA sample,” Kaplan wrote. “If it’s done, we’ll almost certainly get it. But Ms. Carroll’s counsel never forced Mr. Trump to submit a DNA sample. Obviously he decided to try without it.”
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