The Latest Details On Donald Trump's Lawsuit Against His Niece
In October 2020, when The New York Times printed a massive Sunday article based on years of Trump family tax documents, it was said that an anonymous source provided the information for the investigative report, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.
Nearly a year later, former President Donald Trump's niece, Mary Trump, published a book, "Too Much and Not Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man," and admitted that she was the one who gave the Times the Trump family tax documents two years prior.
An enraged Donald then sued both his niece and The New York Times for $100 million and called the release of the tax information an "insidious plot" against him (via The New York Times). Donald also claimed that Mary was in breach of contract for a confidentiality agreement she signed back in 1999 after the former president's father, Fred Trump, died.
Now, it seems there's been some court action on that lawsuit.
Mary Trump seeks to have Donald Trump's lawsuit dismissed
In a Dec. 2, 2021 court filing, Mary Trump and her attorney asked to have Donald Trump's lawsuit against her dismissed, claiming that Donald is trying to violate his niece's First Amendment right to free speech and that he often does that to people by filing lawsuit after lawsuit.
"This baseless case should be dismissed because it is a frivolous attempt to punish Mary Trump and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists for publishing truthful information of great public concern about former President Trump," wrote Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., Mary's attorney (via the New York Post). "Mr. Trump has a long history of filing lawsuits simply to chill freedom of speech and of the press, and this is more of the same. The First Amendment and New York law forbid such abusive lawsuits."
The court filing went further into how Donald's lawsuit violates both the Constitution and New York State's Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) Laws, with Mary's lawyer claiming that Donald's suit was "a transparent effort to punish his niece and these journalists for disseminating truthful information of great public interest concerning Mr. Trump's fitness for the office and aspects of his personal and financial history that he had long sought to hide, to chill them and others from reporting on such information in the future."
As of this writing, there is no word on when a judge will rule on this motion to dismiss Donald's suit.