Judge rules Mary Trump is free to discuss her
tell-all book
The president’s niece had been blocked by a
restraining order from publicizing her work.
By MATTHEW
CHOI
07/13/2020
08:36 PM EDT
President Donald Trump’s niece is free to release and
discuss her damning book on the president’s family, a New York Supreme Court
judge ruled on Monday.
Mary Trump,
daughter of the president’s deceased older brother, Fred Trump Jr., had been
blocked from publicizing her highly anticipated tell-all by a temporary
restraining order as her uncle Robert Trump sued her to impede its release. But
New York Supreme Court Judge Hal Greenwald shut down the restraints on Monday
evening, allowing Mary Trump to promote her book on the eve of its scheduled
publication.
The book,
titled “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most
Dangerous Man,” has already garnered considerable media attention as a peephole
into the upbringing and intimate life of Donald Trump. Mary Trump is the first
member of the president’s family to so publicly open up about the president
outside of his dealings within the White House.
“Now that
the unconstitutional gag order has finally been lifted, we are sure the White
House and America are looking forward to finally hearing what Mary has to say,”
Chris Bastardi, a spokesperson for Mary Trump, said in a statement on Monday.
Robert
Trump claimed the book was a violation of family agreements from 2001 over the
will of the family patriarch, Fred Trump Sr., and a New York court barred Mary
Trump and her publisher, Simon & Schuster, from publicizing the book. But
the state courts lifted the ruling on the publishing house, allowing it to
continue with the book’s publication. Still, Mary Trump remained unable to
speak about her book, barring her from any publicity appearances.
But in his
terse decision on Monday, Greenwald said Robert Trump failed to prove any kind
of violation or irreparable harm that would warrant blocking the book’s
release. Greenwald also pointed out that the book’s discussion of the Trump
family, which could be in the public interest ahead of a presidential election,
was not covered in the 2001 Trump family confidentiality agreement.
“The court
got it right in rejecting the Trump family’s effort to squelch Mary Trump’s
core political speech on important issues of public concern,” Mary Trump’s
lawyer, Theodore Boutrous Jr., said in a statement. “The First Amendment
forbids prior restraints because they are intolerable infringements on the
right to participate in democracy. Tomorrow, the American public will be able
to read Mary’s important words for themselves.”
Greenwald
also publicly clarified that Simon & Schuster would be free to publish the
book, denying Robert Trump's claim that the publishing house was an agent for
Mary Trump. Such a relationship would have equally silenced the publisher.
Greenwald
also notes that thousands of copies of the book had already been printed and
sent out for delivery.
In a
statement, Simon & Schuster celebrated the court’s Monday decision as a
support for the “unfettered right to publish” as “a sacred American freedom.”
“TOO MUCH
AND NEVER ENOUGH is a work of great significance, with very real implications
for our national discourse, and we look forward to bringing it to a public that
is clearly eager to read it,” the statement said.
The public
definitely appears eager to read it. The book is trending number one in
Amazon’s bestseller list, and has made the list for the past three weeks.
Mary Trump,
a clinical psychologist, says in her book that the president was a product of
emotional neglect from an absent mother and sociopathic father. She describes a
person who likely suffers from multiple psychological disorders and repeatedly
lied and cheated through life.
At one
point, Mary Trump claims her uncle Donald paid someone to take his SAT and that
he went to the movies when his brother Fred was dying in the hospital.
The White
House has denied the claims in the book as opportunistic fantasy.
“It's a
book of falsehoods, and that‘s about it,“ White House press secretary Kayleigh
McEnany said last week. “It‘s ridiculous, absurd allegations that has
absolutely no bearing in truth.“
Robert
Trump‘s lawyer, Charles Harder, did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
Josh
Gerstein contributed to this report.
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