Donald Trump, a former President, filed a $100 million lawsuit against Mary Trump, his niece, and The New York Times. They claimed they conspired to get his tax returns in order to help the Pulitzer Prize-winning paper’s investigation into his finances.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Dutchess County, New York, says that New York Times reporters Susanne Craig, David Barstow, and Russ Buettner conducted “an extensive crusade to obtain Donald J. Trump’s confidential tax records.”
“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 says, alleging they were “motivated by a personal vendetta.”
The Pulitzer Prize Board awarded the Pulitzer to the New York Times and three journalists in 2019 for their investigation into the Trump family’s finances. The Pulitzer Prize Board stated that they “debunked Trump’s claims of self-made riches and exposed a tax-evasive business empire.”
According to the newspaper, Trump received over $400 million today from his father’s estate empire. Much of this money was fraudulently taxed.
Mary was the youngest daughter of Fred Trump Jr., the oldest Trump brother. He died in 1981 due to complications from alcoholism.
In her no-holds-barred 2020 memoir, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” she revealed that she was the primary source for the New York Times investigation.
Trump’s 27-page lawsuit asserts that the New York Times reporters “relentlessly sought out his niece, Mary L. Trump, and convinced her to smuggle the records out of her attorney’s office and turn them over to The Times.”
Times reporter Craig tweeted early Wednesday: “I knocked on Mary Trump’s door. She opened it. I think they call that journalism.”
According to the lawsuit, Mary Trump is accused of violating a 2001 nondisclosure agreement that was signed after a settlement regarding Donald Trump Sr’s estate.
The ex-president is seeking $100 million in damages and compensation, along with all proceeds from the book of his niece.
In a statement quoted by NBC, Mary Trump called her uncle “a loser.”
“It’s desperation. The walls are closing in and he is throwing anything against the wall that he thinks will stick,” she said.
“As is always the case with Donald, he’ll try and change the subject.”
Trump is being investigated in New York for tax fraud, and other alleged wrongdoings related to his Trump Organization’s financial activities.
In August, the Justice Department ordered that the Treasury provide six years’ worth of records to a congressional committee. This was a request Trump had long denied making public.
Although the law does not require U.S. presidents to disclose details about their personal finances, every president since Richard Nixon has done this.
Trump stated repeatedly that he would release them in the event of an audit but eventually broke with tradition.
“The Times’s coverage of Donald Trump’s taxes helped inform citizens through meticulous reporting on a subject of overriding public interest,” Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokeswoman for the paper, said in a statement quoted by U.S. media.
“This lawsuit is an attempt to silence independent news organizations and we plan to vigorously defend against it.”
