A New York judge rejected the request of the president’s brother who was seeking to stop the publication of a memoir written by niece of Trump. In a ruling issued Thursday, Judge Peter Kelly said that the New York Probate Court lacks jurisdiction in the case.
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The author, Mary Trump, is the niece of the President and the daughter of Fred Trump Jr., the president’s late older brother. A description from the book ‘Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the Most Dangerous Man in the World’ (‘ Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man’) published on the internet says that the text reveals “a nightmare of trauma, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse”.
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A motion filed this week requested a court order to prevent Mary Trump and Simon & Schuster from publishing the book in July, as scheduled.
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Lawyers for Robert Trump, the other brother of Trump and who filed the motion, filed documents in court in which they argued that Mary Trump and others had signed an agreement that prohibited her from writing the book.
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The agreement of decades ago included a confidentiality clause which explicitly said that “they would not publish any account of the litigation or their relationships”, unless they all agreed, according to the lawyers.
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Such agreement is related to Donald Trump’s father’s will, the real estate developer Fred Trump. But the judge said that that’s not a matter for the probate court, in which equity disputes are resolved.
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Mary Trump’s attorney, Ted Boutrous Jr., said that the court issued the correct ruling.
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“We hope that this decision will conclude the matter. Democracy thrives on the free exchange of ideas and neither this court nor any other has the authority to violate the Constitution by imposing a restriction on the right to express an important political speech, “the lawyer said in a statement.
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