This archive report was first published on 14 July 2020.
On July 13, 2020, a New York judge, Hal B. Greenwald, ruled that Mary L. Trump, the niece of President Trump, could legally publish her explosive tell-all memoir about her family.
The decision came on the eve of the official release of the book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” which had already received enormous public attention.
The memoir reveals family secrets, including an allegation that Donald J. Trump paid someone to take his college entrance exams on his behalf. It also describes how Mr. Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry considered him “a clown” who had “no principles.”
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany had previously described the book as filled with “falsehoods.”
However, Judge Greenwald disagreed, stating that the confidentiality agreement signed by Mary Trump nearly 20 years ago did not prohibit her from revealing family secrets. The agreement was part of a settlement of a group of disputes concerning the will of the family patriarch, Fred Trump Sr.
“Why would a 2001 settlement of two estate matters and a local Supreme Court case contain a clause prohibiting the parties to these actions to ever speak again about their relationships?” Judge Greenwald wrote.
He also noted that since the book was already in print, Simon & Schuster would face “immense costs” if publication were to be stopped. Judge Greenwald said the public had a right to hear Mary Trump’s stories about her dysfunctional family.
“The Trumps were local in 2001,” Judge Greenwald wrote, referring to the year when the confidentiality agreement was reached. “The leader of the Trump family in 2020 is global.”
