A federal judge on Wednesday rejected former President Donald J. Trump’s offer of DNA evidence, saying Mr. Trump’s legal team was trying to stall the upcoming trial in the rape case that the writer E. Jean Carroll brought against him last fall.
The judge, Lewis A. Kaplan of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, noted that the offer last week came after a deadline to disclose evidence and one day after the parties had filed a joint order making clear that they would not call any DNA experts as witnesses. It was part of a pattern of tactics deployed by Mr. Trump the “effect and probable purpose of which” has been to delay a trial set for April, he said.
Judge Kaplan said the stalling was notable “in view of the fact that Ms. Carroll now is 79 years old,” a point the judge has raised in the past, adding that “there is no justification for such a deal.”
What to Know About E. Jean Carroll’s Accusations
Two lawsuits. E. Jean Carroll, a writer who says former President Donald J. Trump raped her in the mid 1990s, has filed two separate lawsuits against the former president. Here’s what to know:
Who is E. Jean Carroll and what does she claim? Ms. Carroll is a journalist and a onetime advice columnist for Elle magazine. She wrote about the alleged assault in a 2019 memoir, claiming that Mr. Trump had attacked her in the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan. The account was the most serious of several sexual misconduct allegations women have made against Mr. Trump, all of which he has denied.
How did Trump respond to her claims? After Ms. Carroll’s account appeared as an excerpt of her book in New York magazine, Mr. Trump emphatically denied her accusations, saying that she was “totally lying,” that the assault had never occurred and that he could not have raped her because she was not his “type.”
On what grounds is Ms. Carroll suing Mr. Trump for rape? In May, New York passed a law giving adult sexual assault victims a one-time opportunity to file civil cases, even if the statute of limitations has long expired. Ms. Carroll subsequently filed a lawsuit, accusing Mr. Trump of rape and seeking damages.
Why did she also sue him for defamation? In 2019, Ms. Carroll filed a defamation lawsuit against Mr. Trump in New York for making disparaging comments and branding her a liar after the publication of her memoir. On Oct. 19, the former president was questioned under oath in the case.
Ms. Carroll, an author and former longtime Elle magazine columnist, accused Mr. Trump of raping her nearly 30 years ago in a memoir she released in 2019. Mr. Trump denied her accusations, saying at the time that he had “never met this person in my life” and calling her a liar intent on selling a book.
The ruling on Wednesday comes less than a week after Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote that the former president was willing to submit his DNA under certain conditions.
Joseph Tacopina, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, said in his filing Friday that the offer was “not seeking to delay the trial date.” In her response hours later, Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, who is not related to the judge, said the last-minute offer was in bad faith and would delay the proceedings.
Ms. Kaplan had no comment on the judge’s order, and Mr. Tacopina also declined to comment.
In the fall of 2019, Ms. Carroll sued Mr. Trump, setting off a three-year legal battle, saying his statements had defamed her by damaging her reputation and career. Last year, she added a suit accusing him of rape under a New York law that allows civil actions to be brought years after the criminal statute of limitations had run out.
Mr. Trump was seeking to offer his DNA in exchange for an appendix that is missing from a laboratory report that Ms. Carroll commissioned about genetic material on a dress she wore when, she says, Mr. Trump assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s.
The report in question is one that Mr. Trump has had — except for the missing appendix — for three years, Judge Kaplan noted. In addition, the judge said, Mr. Trump made it clear that a copy of that appendix would be only a first step and that he would want more evidence related to it, therefore, “introducing a complicated new subject into this case that both sides elected not to pursue over a period of years.”
When the report detailing an examination of Ms. Carroll’s DNA and the dress and shoes she said she was wearing at the time of the incident was initially produced, Ms. Carroll requested Mr. Trump’s DNA to compare with the sample collected. Mr. Trump refused.
In any case, the judge noted, even if Mr. Trump provided DNA, it might not matter for the trial. “It is possible that the results of further DNA analysis using Mr. Trump’s DNA sample would be entirely inconclusive,” he wrote.