Carroll’s lawyers have sought Trump’s DNA sample for three years to compare it with stains found on the dress Carroll wore the day she says Trump raped her in an upscale Manhattan department store dressing room in late 1995 or early 1996. An analysis of DNA on the dress concluded it did contain traces of an unknown man’s DNA.
Trump has denied knowing Carroll and said repeatedly, and sometimes angrily, that he never raped Carroll and that she was making the claim to stoke sales of her book.
After refusing to provide Trump’s DNA sample, his lawyers recently switched tactics, saying they would provide his DNA if Carroll’s lawyers turned over the full DNA report on the dress.
Kaplan wrote in an order that Trump had provided no persuasive reason to relieve him of the consequences of his failure to seek the full DNA report in a timely fashion.
And the judge noted that the report did not find evidence of sperm cells and that reopening the dispute would raise a “complicated new subject into this case that both sides elected not to pursue over a period of years”.
He said that a positive match of Trump’s DNA to that on the dress would prove only that there had been an encounter between Trump and Carroll on a day when she wore the dress, but that it would not prove or disprove that a rape occurred and might prove entirely inconclusive.
Kaplan added: “His conditional invitation to open a door that he kept closed for years threatens to change the nature of a trial for which both parties now have been preparing for years. Whether Mr Trump’s application is intended for a dilatory purpose or not, the potential prejudice to Ms Carroll is apparent.”
