Donald Trump filed a lawsuit agains his niece, Mary Trump, and several journalists at The New York Times for disclosing his tax information, accusing the parties of launching an “insidious plot” filled with “actual malice” against him.
The former president’s suit, filed in New York state court Tuesday, alleges that Mary Trump breached a 2001 agreement when she gave the Times sensitive financial documents. That disclosure led to a Pulitzer Prize winning series of articles that challenged Donald Trump’s assertion that he was self-made. It also exposed a series of questionable tax maneuvers and business practices employed by Trump and his eponymous organization.
The suit seeks “an amount to be determined at trial, but believed to be no less than One Hundred Million Dollars.”
In a statement, Mary Trump slammed her uncle and his suit, saying “I think he is a loser, and he is going to throw anything against the wall he can. It’s desperation. The walls are closing in and he is throwing anything against the wall that he thinks will stick. As is always the case with Donald, he’ll try and change the subject.”
The Times’ Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russ Buettner are named as co-defendants alongside Mary Trump. They’re accused of pressuring Mary Trump to “smuggle records out of her attorney’s office.”
In a tweet, Craig explained: “I knocked on Mary Trump’s door. She opened it. I think they call that journalism.”
Mary Trump revealed that she leaked the documents in a podcast last year. Her animus toward her uncle stems, in part, from a dispute over the will of Frederick Trump, Donald’s father and Mary’s grandfather. That dispute was eventually resolved via a confidential agreement in 2001. Tuesday’s lawsuit alleges that agreement was violated when Mary Trump handed over tax documents to the Times. Mary Trump filed a separate suit about the agreement last year, accusing several members of the Trump family of fraud.
Donald Trump’s lawyers assert the Times journalists “unjustly reaped significant personal, professional and/or business-related benefit(s), including, but not limited to, monetary gain, fame, acclaim, notoriety, inflated market valuation, increased revenue, and/or career advancement.”
A Times spokesman released a statement saying the outlet’s “coverage of Donald Trump’s taxes helped inform citizens through meticulous reporting on a subject of overriding public interest. This lawsuit is an attempt to silence independent news organizations and we plan to vigorously defend against it.”
Mary Trump wrote a tell-all about her uncle that was released in July 2020, titled Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man. That, too, prompted a lawsuit; Robert Trump, the former president’s younger brother, asked a judge to prevent its publication. The judge ruled against him.
