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Court Tosses Trump Bid To Bone Discovery On The Eve Of Carroll Defamation Trial

These guys aren't subtle.

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Donald Trump yelling

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Two weeks ago, celebrity lawyer Joseph Tacopina entered his appearance for Donald Trump in the E. Jean Carroll defamation litigation. After two years in which Trump’s attorney Alina Habba worked with singular dedication to thoroughly piss off Judge Lewis Kaplan, Tacopina vowed in court last week to turn over a new leaf.

“If you say start tomorrow, I’ll be ready,” Trump’s new lawyer said on Tuesday, even as he professed his great respect for opposing counsel. “If you say April, I’m trying it in April. I’m not running from this obligation.”

Famous last words.

Just two days later, the Daily Beast reported that Trump would agree to a DNA test for comparison to male genetic material found on the dress Carroll wore the day she says he raped her in a department store dressing room in the mid-90s. Trump has adamantly refused to consent to a DNA test for more than two years, but on Friday, Tacopina docketed a letter motion purporting to offer a quid pro quo exchange: his client’s spit for a missing appendix from a DNA report docketed in 2020.

Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) was livid, responding with her own letter accusing Trump of seeking to poison the jury pool and delay trial by introducing new forensic evidence months after the parties had mutually agreed that discovery was closed.

This morning, Judge Kaplan denied Trump’s motion in an order that suggests the court was not amused by this latest stunt. Calling the motion “patently untimely,” he observed that the former president’s “numerous counsel” were “anything but diligent in seeking the appendix to the DNA report.” Whether this was a strategic decision or simply the result of negligence is irrelevant to the court.

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One possible explanation is that it is an attempt to reverse a deliberate tactical decision by Mr. Trump’s counsel not to raise the question of the appendix over the past three years, a decision perhaps the product of a belief that asking for the appendix might well have resulted in renewed demands for Mr. Trump’s DNA. Another possible explanation is a negligent failure to read the report with any care over the entire three-year period and thus the failure to notice the lack of the appendix. But whatever the explanation, the effort comes too late.

There is “no justification” to reopen discovery just weeks before the trial and force Carroll recalibrate a legal strategy crafted “on the entirely justified basis that there will be no DNA evidence.”

The court similarly rubbished Tacopina’s suggestion that another round of forensic analysis could be done without delaying the imminent trial.

“Mr. Trump’s offer to provide a DNA sample as a quid pro quo for production of the appendix and then to begin a process of new expert analyses inevitably leading to further reports and discovery almost certainly would delay the trial,” the court writes, adding that, “Whether Mr. Trump’s application is intended for a dilatory purpose or not, the potential prejudice to Ms. Carroll is apparent.”

Whether. Yeah, it’s a big mystery.

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Carroll v. Trump I [Docket via Court Listener]
Carroll v. Trump II [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

 

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