Lawyers of Dr. Mary L. Trump PhD, a niece of president Donald Trump, remain confident a New York court will lift a temporary restraining order on their client.
The lifting will clear the way for the unimpeded release of a bombshell book written by Dr. Trump certain to damage her uncle's reelection bid. Among other horrific revelations, the book tells how Trump consistently cheated on paying his taxes in New York City.
Dr. Trump is the author of "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man." It will start being sold to the public on July 28.
Dr. Trump has taught graduate students about trauma, psychopathology, and developmental psychology. She's the daughter of Fred Trump Jr., and a granddaughter of Fred Trump Sr. Her father and grandfather are both deceased.
Dr. Trump is the anonymous source that revealed Trump family tax returns to The New York Times, which wrote a stunning expose based on this information that won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize.
The book tells how Dr. Trump provided The New York Times with these tax documents from the Trump family. The documents she provided revealed how Donald Trump transferred $413 million from his father's real estate businesses to his own businesses facing bankruptcy during the 1990s.
Dr. Trump also claims Donald Trump and Fred Trump Sr. neglected her father and contributed to his death from alcoholism. She also said Donald Trump kept belittling his father despite the latter's Alzheimer's disease.
A lawsuit seeking to stop publication and sale of the book was filed by Dr. Trump's uncle, Robert Trump. On June 30, a lower-court judge in New York issued a restraining order that would have prevented the book's publisher, Simon & Schuster, from selling the book on July 28.
The very next day, however, the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division lifted the restraining order against Simon & Schuster. This decision allowed the book publisher to sell the book.
On the other hand, this ruling retained the restraining order against Dr. Trump. On July 2, Dr. Trump's lawyers filed her affidavit along with a brief seeking to vacate that restraining order on First Amendment grounds.
Her arguments will be heard on July 10. Her lawyers are confident the restraining order will be lifted and contend this constitutes prior restraint, which is disallowed by the First Amendment.
In his lawsuit, Robert Trump contends Dr. Trump was part of a settlement almost 20 years ago that included a confidentiality clause. This non-disclosure agreement (NDA) said members of the Trump family agree not to "publish any account concerning the litigation or their relationship," unless they all agreed.
Dr. Trump contested the terms of the NDA in her affidavit. She said she hasn't received any money from the settlement since April 2001.
She also said she agreed to the settlement based on asset valuations of her grandfather's estate. Dr. Trump now believes the valuation were inaccurate based on the report by the New York Times.
She also said her uncles and aunt have been talking in public about the family for years without asking her permission.
Ted Boutrous, Dr. Trump's lawyer, said there's no reason the court should continue upholding the NDA. He said the settlement agreement that includes the NDA "is the product of fraud, therefore it's void, it can't be enforced. It's one of the many reasons it's just not worth the paper it's printed on at this point."
