“Now that the unconstitutional gag order has finally been lifted, we are confident that the White House and the United States hope to finally hear what Mary has to say,” Chris Bastardi, a spokeswoman for Mary Trump, said in a statement Monday.
Robert Trump claimed the book was a violation of the 2001 family agreements on the will of the family patriarch, Fred Trump Sr., and a New York court prohibited Mary Trump and its publisher, Simon & Schuster, from publishing the book. But state courts upheld the ruling on the publisher, allowing it to continue publishing the book. Still, Mary Trump was still unable to speak about her book, preventing it from appearing in advertising.
But in his brief decision Monday, Greenwald said Robert Trump was unable to prove any kind of rape or irreparable harm that would justify blocking the book’s publication. Greenwald also noted that discussion of the book on the Trump family, which could be in the public interest before the presidential election, was not covered in the 2001 Trump family confidentiality agreement.
“The court was successful in rejecting the efforts of the Trump family to silence Mary Trump’s central political discourse on important issues of public interest,” Mary Trump’s attorney, Theodore Boutrous Jr., said in a statement. “The First Amendment prohibits prior restrictions because they are intolerable violations of the right to participate in democracy. Tomorrow, the American public will be able to read Mary’s important words for herself. “
Greenwald also publicly clarified that Simon & Schuster would be free to publish the book, denying Robert Trump’s claim that the publisher was an agent of Mary Trump. Such a relationship would also have silenced the publisher.
Greenwald also notes that thousands of copies of the book had already been printed and shipped for delivery.
In a statement, Simon & Schuster celebrated Monday’s court decision in support of the “unlimited right to publish” as “a sacred American freedom.”
“TOO MUCH AND NEVER ENOUGH is a job of great importance, with very real implications for our national discourse, and we hope to bring it to an audience clearly eager to read it,” the statement said.
The public definitely seems eager to read it. The book is the number one trend on Amazon’s best seller list, and has been on the list for the past three weeks.
Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, says in her book that the president was the product of the emotional neglect of an absent mother and a sociopathic father. She describes a person who probably suffers from multiple psychological disorders and repeatedly lied and cheated throughout life.
At one point, Mary Trump claims that her uncle Donald paid someone to take his SAT and that he went to the movies when his brother Fred was dying in the hospital.
The White House has denied the book’s claims as an opportunistic fantasy.
“It is a book of falsehoods, and that’s it,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said last week. “They are ridiculous and absurd accusations that have absolutely no relation to the truth.”
Robert Trump’s attorney, Charles Harder, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.
