Former President Donald Trump has filed a $100 million lawsuit against his niece from Rockville Centre for publishing a scathing tell-all book and giving key family tax records to The New York Times.
Trump named both Mary Trump and The Times, which used the records as the basis for a Pulitzer Prize-winning exposé detailing an alleged tax scheme perpetrated by the ex-president and his late father Fred Trump Sr., as defendants in the lawsuit. He’s represented by New Jersey-based attorney Alina Habba.
“I think he is a fucking loser, and he is going to throw anything against the wall he can,” Mary Trump told The Daily Beast, which first reported the lawsuit. “It’s desperation.”
The 55-year-old psychologist is suing the former president, his sister Maryanne Trump Barry, and his late brother Robert’s estate for allegedly defrauding her out of a multimillion-dollar inheritance.
The case’s origins are in the 1981 death of Mary’s father, Fred Trump Jr., the older brother of Donald Trump, who left the then 16-year-old Mary a profitable real estate portfolio. Mary Trump said her aunt and uncles were supposed to look after her interests but instead siphoned money away, and finally “squeezed” her out of the family fortune in a 2001 settlement related to the estate of Fred Trump Sr, who died in 1999.
She sued Donald in September 2020, just under two years after she claimed to learn what they did through The Times’ investigation into Trump’s finances. In Mary Trump’s best-selling tell-all Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, she revealed that she provided the family’s tax records to Times reporters.
The Times used the documents to expose the former president’s role in an allegedly fraudulent tax scheme, which involved several properties on LI. Among the revelations were the Trump family setting up a shell corporation called All County Building Supply & Maintenance, with an address in Manhasset, that was allegedly used to launder money to avoid taxes.
“The Time’s coverage of Donald Trump’s taxes helped inform citizens through meticulous reporting on a subject of overriding public interest,” The Times said in a statement in response. “This lawsuit is an attempt to silence independent news organizations and we plan to vigorously defend against it.”
-With Reuters
Related Story: Montauk Key To Trump Taking Over Family Empire, Niece Writes in Tell-All
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