US Former President Donald Trump sues his niece and NY Times on Tuesday for a story about his wealth and tax practices, published in 2018. The report was extracted from some confidential documents that his estranged niece provided to the NY Times reporter.
Mary Trump became the source of information for the newspaper who violated a settlement agreement with the former president and disclosed the records. The lawsuit hired by Trump launched a case in the state court of New York for using those confidential documents without consent.
The story about Trump’s wealth challenged the claims of self-made wealth by the former president. It revealed that Fred Trump, the father of Donald Trump, bestowed him with “at least $413 million” and his wealth is collected using tax avoidance strategies.
It has been accused in the legal proceeding that the New York Times and three of its investigative reporters seek out Mary Trump repeatedly to hand over the documents to them. They were “motivated by a personal vendetta” and wanted to put a political agenda, according to Trump’s lawsuit.
David Barstow, Susanne Craig, and Russel Buettner were the reports behind that “’18 tax story” and they already knew about the settlement agreement on those tax and wealth records but barred her to disclose the information.
The lawsuit further claims that reports plot a subtle plan with the help of Mary Trump to access the highly confidential and sensitive information to exploit that for their own purposes. They utilized the information “as a means of falsely legitimizing their publicized works”.
Trump’s niece got those documents of record in a family dispute over patriarch Fred Trump’s estate. The records contain more than 10,000 pages of financial documents including the tax returns of Trump’s family. She, herself, identified her as the source of those documents provided to the NY Times in a book that was published last year.
In response to the legal action against Mary Trump, she recorded her statement about her uncle as “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”, to NBC News.
A representative from NY Times said that this attempt by Trump’s suit is against the freedom of news organizations to silence them, and they will defend it. Danielle Rhoads also said that the publication of the story was to inform the citizens over a subject of public interest.
Donald Trump initially filed this case about a year ago when Mary made allegations that Trump along with his siblings, cheated her for millions of dollars by keeping her out of the family business.
Mary Trump, 56 is the daughter of Fred Trump Jr., brother of Donald Trump. Fred Trump Jr died at the age of 42 when she was only 16.
The Times scoop about Trumps taxes is a Pulitzer Prize winner for the brilliant reporting.
The former president has asked for $100 million as damage.
