Donald Trump settles lawsuit against niece over publication of tax records
By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK, June 17 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump has settled his lawsuit against his niece, Mary Trump, accusing her of improperly leaking information about her finances and alleged tax avoidance to the New York Times for its 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation.
Both parties announced the settlement in a letter filed Tuesday in New York state court in Manhattan and expect to formally dismiss in the coming weeks.
No terms were disclosed. Impeachment would be prejudicial, meaning the US president cannot re-impeach.
Lawyers for Donald Trump and Mary Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The White House referred a request for comment to the president’s lawyers.
Donald Trump sued Mary Trump in 2021, accusing her of participating in an “insidious conspiracy” with the Times to exploit tax records to make money, advance their political agendas and carry out vendettas.
Trump said his nephew violated confidentiality provisions of a 2001 agreement regarding the estate of Fred Trump Sr., Donald Trump’s father and Mary Trump’s grandfather. Fred Trump died in 1999.
Psychologist Mary Trump identified herself as the Times’ source in her 2020 bestseller “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.”
A state appeals court in May 2024 found a “substantial” legal basis for Donald Trump’s privacy claim, but said he may deserve only “nominal damages” rather than the $100 million he was seeking.
Mary Trump’s lawyers argued that the lawsuit violated a New York state law that bars frivolous lawsuits designed to silence critics’ free speech.
The judge overseeing the case dismissed Donald Trump’s related claims against the Times and reporters in 2023 and later ordered Trump to pay $392,639 in attorney fees.
In 2022, the same judge dismissed Mary Trump’s separate lawsuit accusing the president and his two siblings of defrauding her out of a multimillion-dollar inheritance.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Mark Porter)
