The lawyer for a woman who claims Donald Trump raped her in the 1990s said in court on Tuesday they were not seeking a deposition from the former president in her defamation case against him – but they want a sample of his DNA.
Attorney Roberta Kaplan told Manhattan federal court judge Lewis Kaplan that she and her client — former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll — were not seeking Trump’s sworn testimony because they wanted the prosecution to go to trial without further delay.
“We want his DNA. That’s it,” Kaplan said.
Speaking to reporters in the hallway outside the courtroom, Kaplan said a deposition would cause “undue delay”.
A lawyer for the former president, Alina Habba, said Kaplan’s decision not to seek a deposition was “surprising” and the first she had heard of it.
Habba also claimed she was unaware of any request from Carroll’s legal team for a DNA sample from Trump.
Kaplan said the request was made when Carroll first filed the lawsuit in New York state court in 2019 – and remained when it was transferred to federal court a year later. late.
She added that she was confident Trump would be ordered to provide a sample when the suit moved to the discovery phase.
Carroll sued Trump for allegedly making defamatory statements about her after he detailed in a magazine article how he allegedly raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s.
On Tuesday, Carroll told reporters she would “never settle” the lawsuit against the former president.
” It’s a matter of principle. It’s about a powerful man who assaults and rapes a woman and then gets away with it. It’s not fair,” Carroll said outside of court.
