(Associated Press) Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday sued his estranged niece and the New York Times over a 2018 story about his family’s wealth and tax practices that was partly based on confidential documents she provided to the newspaper’s reporters.
Trump’s lawsuit, filed in state court in New York, accuses Mary Trump of breaching a settlement agreement by disclosing tax records she received in a dispute over family patriarch Fred Trump’s estate.
The lawsuit accuses the Times and three of its investigative reporters — Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russell Buettner — of relentlessly seeking out Mary Trump as a source of information and convincing her to turn over documents.
The suit claims the reporters were aware the settlement agreement barred her from disclosing the documents.
The Times‘ story challenged Trump’s claims of self-made wealth by documenting how his father, Fred, had given him at least $413 million over the decades, including through tax avoidance schemes.
Mary Trump identified herself in a book published last year as the source of the documents provided to the Times.
Trump’s lawsuit alleges Mary Trump, the Times and its reporters “were motivated by a personal vendetta” against him and a desire to push a political agenda.
The defendants “engaged in an insidious plot to obtain confidential and highly-sensitive records which they exploited for their own benefit and utilized as a means of falsely legitimizing their publicized works,” the lawsuit said.
In a statement to NBC News, Mary Trump said of her uncle, “I think he is a loser, and he is going to throw anything against the wall he can. It’s desperation. The walls are closing in and he is throwing anything against the wall that he thinks will stick. As is always the case with Donald, he’ll try and change the subject.”
A Times spokesperson, Danielle Rhoads Ha, said the lawsuit “is an attempt to silence independent news organizations and we plan to vigorously defend against it.”
The Times‘ coverage of Trump’s taxes, she said, “helped inform citizens through meticulous reporting on a subject of overriding public interest.”
One of the Times reporters, Craig, responded in a tweet: “I knocked on Mary Trump’s door. She opened it. I think they call that journalism.”
Trump is seeking $100 million in damages.
Trump filed his lawsuit almost a year to the day after Mary Trump sued him over allegations that he and two of his siblings cheated her out of millions of dollars over several decades while squeezing her out of the family business.
That case is pending.
Mary Trump, 56, is the daughter of Donald Trump’s brother, Fred Trump Jr., who died in 1981 at age 42. Mary Trump was 16 at the time.
Trump’s lawsuit focuses only on the Times‘ 2018 story, a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
According to the lawsuit, Mary Trump came into possession of more than 40,000 pages of “highly sensitive, proprietary, private and confidential documents” through a legal case involving Fred Trump’s will.
The documents including financial records, accountings, tax returns, bank statements, and legal papers pertaining to Donald Trump, Fred Trump and their businesses, Trump’s lawsuit said.
In 2001, about two years after Fred Trump died, Mary Trump and other family members entered into a settlement agreement with confidentiality and non-disclosure clauses that barred them from sharing information about Fred Trump’s estate in, among other venues, newspaper stories, Trump’s lawsuit said. The agreement also covered the estate of Fred’s wife, Mary Anne Trump, who died in 2000.
Trump, who bashed the Times repeatedly during his presidency as the “failing New York Times,” noted in the lawsuit that the 2018 article was viewed more online than any previous Times article and that the New York Times Company’s stock price jumped 7.4% the week it ran.
