President Donald Trump’s family went to court to try to block the publication of his niece’s book about him, his editor and his lawyer confirmed to NBC News.
“President Trump and his brothers are trying to suppress a book that will discuss matters of utmost public importance. They are pursuing this illegal pre-restriction because they do not want the public to know the truth. The courts will not tolerate this blatant violation of the First Amendment,” Ted Boutros, an attorney for Trump’s niece Mary Trump, said in a statement Tuesday.
The family’s legal action was first reported by The New York Times. The newspaper quoted an unidentified person who was familiar with the matter as saying that the president’s younger brother, Robert Trump, had filed a temporary restraining order against Mary Trump in the Queens Substitute Court, which handles willpower disputes.
NBC News has not obtained the legal filing.
Mary Trump and her brother, Fred Trump III, were involved in a messy court fight over her grandfather’s inheritance in 2000, the New York Daily News reported at the time. Mary and Fred’s father, Fred Trump Jr., had died in 1984, and they said they had been amended in her will thanks to the family’s machinations.
The court fight included allegations that Donald Trump and his two surviving brothers cut family health coverage for Mary and her brother, who was married and had a young son with a neurological disorder.
“When he sued us, we said, ‘Why should we give him medical coverage?'” Donald Trump told the newspaper at the time, referring to Fred Trump III.
The dispute was resolved in a confidential agreement, which the president said last weekend that included a “very powerful” confidentiality agreement.
“He is not allowed to write a book,” Trump told Axios in an interview. “You know, when we settled down with her and her brother, with whom I have a good relationship, she has a brother, Fred, with whom I have a good relationship, but when we settled down, she has a total … she signed a nondisclosure.”
“It covers everything,” added the president.
Mary Trump’s book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the Most Dangerous Man in the World,” will be released on July 28. Publisher Simon & Schuster describes the book as a “revealing and authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made it.”
“She describes a nightmare of trauma, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and damaging relationship between Fred Trump and his two older sons, Fred Jr. and Donald, “says the description.
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In a statement to the Times, Robert Trump said he was “deeply disappointed” with his niece and that his “attempt to sensationalize and mischaracterize our family relationship after all these years for his own financial gain is both a parody and an injustice to him. I remember my late brother Fred and our dear parents. “
Simon & Schuster, who released another book the president had tried to stop Tuesday, John Bolton’s “The Room Where It Happened,” predicted it would have similar success in publishing the book by Mary Trump.
“As the plaintiff and his attorney are well aware, the courts have a weak view of the previous restriction, and this attempt to block publication will have the same fate as the previous ones,” the company said in a statement.
