Donald Trump sues niece Mary and NYT for $200M over 2019 tax affair reporting
Mary Trump with an insert of Donald Trump
Mary Trump with an insert of Donald Trump Former President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against his niece Mary Trump as well as The New York Times over the papers' explosive 2019 report on Trump's taxes. That story, which ended up winning a Pulitzer Prize was aided by Mary Trump handing over documents to the Times, which is the focus of the lawsuit filed by Trump.
The lawsuit is part of a long battle between Donald and Mary, going back years. On November 8, 2020, she went viral for predicting "meltdowns upon meltdowns" after Biden was named President-Elect. Days later, she claimed Trump wouldn't run again, because he was "scared to lose like this again". Those comments came after a judge refused to stop the release of Mary's tell-all book 'Too Much and Never Enough', another major loss for Trump in court.
As with the latest lawsuit, Mary's book is also tied to the confidentiality agreement she signed in 2001 over the will of grandfather Frederick Trump. The former President appears to be using that NDA to claim Mary illegally handed over tax records to the Times. While the first lawsuit failed, it remains to be seen if this one will hold up in court, particularly given Trump's poor record of winning legal battles, and often picking gaffe-prone lawyers.
Why did Trump sue Mary?
In 2019, the Times published the article 'Decade in the Red: Trump Tax Figures Show Over $1 Billion in Business Losses'. The story recorded how the then-President "was already in deep financial distress," despite claims of being a successful billionaire. "But 10 years of tax information obtained by The New York Times paints a different, and far bleaker, picture of his deal-making abilities and financial condition," the Times wrote.
A bulk of that report was made possible by Mary handing over Trump's
tax documents to the Times, amongst them official Internal Revenue
Service tax transcripts, and 1040 federal tax forms between 1985 to
1994. The paper concluded, "Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money
than nearly any other individual American taxpayer." In a 2021 interview,
Mary claimed she was "proud" to have handed over the documents. Years
later though, Trump has decided to act and sued Mary as well as the
Times.
His lawsuit was first reported by The Daily Beast, who said the lawsuit was filed on September 21, 2021, in Dutchess County, New York by attorney Alina Habba. Trump claims Mary and the Times hatched an "insidious plot" to "smuggle records out of her attorney’s office". Apart from Mary, the suit has also named NYT reporters Susanne Craig, David Barstow, and Russell Buettner, all of who worked on the story.
Trump is seeking "an amount to be determined at trial but believed to be no less than One Hundred Million Dollars" from both Mary and the Times. He claims his tax returns were "exploited for their (the Times and Mary's) own benefit and utilized as a means of falsely legitimizing their publicized works." Rather than being concerned though, Mary has simply laughed off the challenge from her uncle. "It’s desperation. The walls are closing in and he is throwing anything against the wall that will stick," she said in a statement, adding, "I think he is a fucking loser." The Times meanwhile, has not responded with a statement or comment.
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