Lawyers for E. Jean Carroll, who said Donald Trump raped her in a New York department store in the 1990s, are seeking a sample of the president's DNA to determine whether it matches genetic material found on the dress she wore during the alleged assault.
On Thursday, her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, filed court documents calling on Trump to submit a sample on March 2 in Washington, DC, for "analysis and comparison against unidentified male DNA present on the dress" Carroll wore that day.
A Jan. 8 laboratory report attached to the notice said that DNA recovered from the right sleeve of the dress was a mixture of four individuals, Carroll and three others, including at least one male. The report said a number of individuals whose names were redacted were eliminated as potential contributors to the mixture.
“This case turns on whether Donald Trump lied when he said that he had not sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll and, in fact, had never even met her," Kaplan said in a statement. "As a result, we’ve requested a simple saliva sample from Mr. Trump to test his DNA, and there really is no valid basis for him to object.”
The lawyer representing Trump in the case did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News' request for comment.
Carroll, a writer and advice columnist, filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump in November, saying he lied when he denied her rape allegations.
In June, Carroll released a new book, an excerpt from which was published in New York magazine. She alleged Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room about 23 years ago.
In the dressing room, Carroll alleged Trump grabbed her arms, pinned her against the wall, pulled down her tights, and "thrust his penis" inside her, according to court documents.
After Carroll came forward, Trump denied the allegation and claimed he had "never met that person in my life." He also accused her of making up other allegations — Carroll had also accused disgraced former CBS CEO Les Moonves of sexually assaulting her — and said the Democratic party must have been involved.
In a statement Thursday, Carroll said that after Trump allegedly sexually assaulted her, she took the black dress she had been wearing and hung it in her closet where it stayed until last year when she wore it for the New York magazine photo shoot.
DNA does degrade over time but, if preserved well, can last millions of years. Genetic material has been obtained from evidence in decades-old cases to use for testing. In 2013, investigators linked the man they believed to be the Boston Strangler, who murdered 13 women in the 1960s, to old fluid samples taken from one victim's body and a blanket from the crime scene.
“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.