In a New York magazine article 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 coat dress 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.
Trump said in June that Carroll was “totally lying” and he had “never met this person in my life”. While a 1987 photo shows them and their then spouses at a social event, Trump dismissed it as a moment when he was “standing with my coat on in a line”.
“She is trying to sell a new book – that should indicate her motivation,” he said in one of various statements on the matter, adding that the 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 of Trump’s statements.
“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,” Carroll said in a statement on Thursday.
Her lawyer, Kaplan, said it was “standard operating procedure” in a sexual assault investigation to request a DNA sample from the accused
“As a result, we’ve requested a simple saliva sample from 🍊 to test his DNA, and there really is no valid basis for him to object,” she said.
“As a result, we’ve requested a simple saliva sample from 🍊 to test his DNA, and there really is no valid basis for him to object,” she said.
Trump is in the middle of being tried in the US Senate on articles of impeachment accusing him of abusing his position and obstructing Congress in his dealings with Ukraine.
Trump’s lawyer has tried to get the defamation case thrown out. A Manhattan judge declined to do so earlier this month, saying the attorney had not properly backed up his arguments that the case did not belong in a New York court.
Trump said that writer E. Jean Carroll was "totally lying" when she recently accused him of raping her during an encounter in a ... she's not my type.
