A New York State judge has dismissed author Mary Trump’s multimillion-dollar lawsuit against her uncle, former president Donald Trump, and his siblings, citing the release agreement she signed to settle an earlier dispute over the will of her late grandfather, Fred Trump Sr.
Ms Trump, a clinical psychologist by training, had alleged in court documents that the ex-president, his late brother Robert Trump, and his sister, retired federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry, had breached a fiduciary duty they held to her by acting to bilk her out of millions of dollars she would have inherited from her the estate of her late father, Fred Trump Jr, who was a beneficiary of her grandfather’s will.
While she claimed that she only learned of the fraud when a trio of New York Times reporters looked at papers she was provided as part of the settlement while reporting what would become a Pulitzer Prize-winning feature on Mr Trump’s taxes, New York Supreme Court Justice Robert Reed said in an opinion published on Tuesday that she had "clearly and unambiguously” given up her right to sue as part of the $2.7m settlement.
The judge also found that the original settlement was not "a case where defendants' alleged threats precluded the exercise of plaintiff's free will”.
The 2001 settlement agreement was also the focus of a previous lawsuit filed by Mr Trump in hopes of stopping publication of her best-selling 2020 tell all, Too Much and Never Enough.
Mr Trump and his siblings sued Ms Trump and the book’s publisher, Simon and Schuster, and argued that publishing the book violated a confidentiality and non disparagement clause in the 2001 agreement, but a New York State judge declined to block Simon and Schuster from releasing the book.
Ms Trump’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, called the ruling “both incorrect and disappointing” in a statement.
"Given the age of the defendants, not to mention the fact that one of them intends to announce today that he is running again for President, we intend to seek an expedited appeal,” she said.
