NEW YORK - Mr Donald Trump has defeated his niece Mary Trump in a lawsuit where she accused the former US president and two of his siblings of defrauding her out of a multimillion-dollar inheritance.
In a decision on Monday (Nov 14), Justice Robert Reed of a New York state court in Manhattan said Ms Trump released her claims against her relatives in a 2001 settlement over the estate of Mr Trump’s father Fred Trump Sr.
Judge Reed’s decision came the same day a federal judge in Manhattan handed Mr Trump another legal victory, dismissing a lawsuit by his former lawyer Michael Cohen over being returned to prison in alleged retaliation for writing a tell-all memoir.
Ms Trump’s case had its roots in the 1981 death of her father Fred Trump Jr, Donald Trump’s older brother, who left her, then 16, a profitable real estate portfolio.
Now a 57-year-old psychologist, Ms Trump claimed that her uncles Donald and Robert Trump and aunt Maryanne Trump Barry were supposed to protect her interests but instead “squeezed” her out of tens of millions of dollars.
She claimed she learned of the fraud only when the New York Times published a 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning probe into Mr Trump’s finances, including his alleged efforts to avoid taxes.
But the judge said the settlement, which gave Ms Trump more than US$2.7 million (S$3.7 million), “clearly and unambiguously” released the defendants from Ms Trump’s claims.
He also said the settlement was neither unfair, nor “a case where defendants’ alleged threats precluded the exercise of plaintiff’s free will.”
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Ms Maryanne Trump Barry is a retired federal judge. Mr Robert Trump died in August 2020.
“Yesterday’s decision is both incorrect and disappointing,” Ms Trump’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan said 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.”
Some of Ms Trump’s allegations about Mr Trump were in her own 2020 tell-all, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man. Her book and Mr Cohen’s Disloyal: A Memoir were bestsellers.
In seeking a dismissal of Ms Trump’s lawsuit, Mr Trump accused his niece of trying to reopen the 2001 settlement to further her own political agenda and cash in on the family name.
Mr Trump is separately suing his niece, the Times and three reporters for more than US$100 million. He claims they plotted to exploit his tax records to fulfill personal vendettas and desires for acclaim and money at his political expense.
