Trump Agrees To Provide His DNA In Rape Case After Deadline For Evidence Has Passed

Former President Donald Trump has agreed to provide his DNA for his upcoming rape trial with E. Jean Carroll, but only after the deadline to submit evidence passed, according to a report.

Trump's attorneys last week said he finally agreed to take a DNA test so that they could compare it to the black coat dress that Carroll said she was wearing when the former president allegedly pushed her against a wall at a Manhattan store and sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s.

That being said, the deadline for the discovery of evidence has passed, which means it is too late for Trump's DNA to be tested against the DNA recovered from Carroll's dress, as per The Daily Beast.

The outlet also noted that Carroll's team has yet to be told about Trump's proposition. Legal experts who spoke to the outlet said it may be the defense team's legal strategy to show jurors that he did submit DNA but Carroll's team failed to test it.

This strategy may then lead jurors to think that Trump, who offered evidence, is innocent of his crime and that Carroll, who did not test the DNA, believes it would not be a match.

It is possible for a judge to reopen the discovery phase of the case, allowing Trump's DNA to be tested against Carroll's coat dress. The move, however, is rare.

"If you really want to get to the trial on the merits, you both comply with the discovery deadline. It's the rare case in which someone says we need to reopen discovery," Edward J. Imwinkelried, a retired law professor at University of California, Davis, told the outlet.

Carroll publicly accused Trump of raping her in the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the fall of 1995 or spring of 1996 in her memoir "What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal," which was published in July 2019.

At the time, Trump, who was serving as the president, denied the allegations, saying he had never met Carroll and that she was "not my type."

Carroll pushed back on Trump's statement and shared a photo she said proved they met. She filed a defamation lawsuit later that year and a second suit accusing him of six crimes under New York law after the state passed a rape survivor law that allowed litigations on decades-old claims. That case is expected to go to trial in April.