A New York state judge closed one chapter on an attempt to block a book by President Donald Trump’s niece that paints a harsh portrait of Trump and their family’s history and ruled it can hit store shelves.
Judge Alan D. Scheinkman, a New York appellate judge reversed a lower court’s decision from this week that issued a temporary restraining order on the book.
Mary Trump’s book about her uncle, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” is a potential bestseller, with tens of thousands of copies shipped before its July 28 publication. The book has also been at the top of online lists for book pre-sales.
“We support Mary L. Trump’s right to tell her story in Too Much and Never Enough , a work of great interest and importance to the national discourse that fully deserves to be published for the benefit of the American public,” said Adam Rothberg, a spokesperson for the company. “As all know, there are well-established precedents against prior restraint and pre-publication injunctions, and we remain confident that the preliminary injunction will be denied.”
Robert Trump, the president’s younger brother, filed a suit in late June in New York in Queens County Surrogate court, where the estate of the president’s father, Fred Trump Sr., was settled after his death in 1999. However, the judge tossed the case out because it was not the proper venue for the dispute.
Lawyers for Robert Trump quickly re-filed a claim in Dutchess County Supreme Court in upstate New York, where he lives. Robert Trump argues that his niece, Mary Trump, violated a confidentiality agreement that barred her from writing the kind of tell-all book that she describes.
Judge Hal B. Greenwald had initially issued a temporary injunction after Robert Trump re-filed in court in upstate New York. Robert Trump has argued that Mary Trump is not allowed to publish anything about her family as part of a settlement agreement in Fred Trump Sr.’s inheritance case.
The publisher, Simon & Schuster, said in a filing on Tuesday that it had already printed 75,000 copies, and more copies are being made.
Simon & Schuster said in court documents that it be unconstitutional to stop publication and that it was unaware that Mary Trump had signed a nondisclosure agreement with her family. The company also believes that it is not liable if she breached the agreement.
“We did not learn anything about Ms. Trump signing any agreement concerning her ability to speak about her litigation with her family until shortly after press broke concerning Ms. Trump’s Book about two weeks ago, well after the Book had been accepted, put into production, and printing had begun,” Jonathan Karp, the CEO of Simon & Schuster, said in an affidavit filed Tuesday. “And we never saw any purported agreement until this action was filed against Ms. Trump and Simon & Schuster.”
Karp said in his affidavit that Mary Trump revealed to the company she leaked Trump’s tax returns to the New York Times for its 2018 investigation, which later won the Pulitzer Prince. Karp argued that since “no litigation” was taken after Trump’s tax returns were leaked the company was “entirely confident in Ms. Trump’s ability to tell her story regarding her own family.”
