New York journalist and Writer and E. Jean Carroll, who has accused Donald J. Trump of raping her in the 1990s and is suing him for defamation, asked on Thursday that he provide a DNA sample to determine whether his genetic material is on a dress she says she had on at the time of the incident. The request for the DNA sample was made in a letter sent to President Trump’s lawyers via email, a spokeswoman for Roberta A. Kaplan, Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, said. Ms. Kaplan asked that the sample be turned over by March 2.
Lawrence S. Rosen, a lawyer representing the president in the defamation suit filed by Ms. Carroll, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Carroll said that she only wore the dress one other time since the alleged assault. Carroll’s legal team had the black wool dress that she wore at the time of the alleged incident submitted to a lab for testing which found a mix of four people’s DNA on the sleeve, one of which belongs to a man, according to a lab report.
The move comes amid a trial in the United States Senate that will determine whether Mr. Trump, who was impeached by the House, will be convicted and removed from office.
In a New York magazine piece in June and a book published the next month, Carroll said she and Trump met by chance, chatted and went to the lingerie department for Trump to pick out a gift for an unidentified woman. She said joking banter about trying on a bodysuit ended in a dressing room, where she said Trump reached under her black wool dress, pulled down her tights and raped her as she tried to fight him off, eventually escaping.
“The Donna Karan coatdress still hangs on the back of my closet door, unworn and unlaundered since that evening,” she wrote. She donned it for a photo accompanying the magazine piece.
Although Mr. Trump denied the allegation, saying that he did not know Ms. Carroll, despite a photograph showing them together in the 1980s. Mr. Trump also said that Ms. Carroll had fabricated the episode to sell her book and that she was “not my type”; Such legal demands often spur court fights requiring a judge to weigh in on whether they will be enforced.