New York judge rules against Trump family, clears way for publication of Mary Trump's book
A New York judge has rejected the Trump family's attempt to stop the release of Mary Trump's book, "Too Much and Never Enough," scheduled to come out Tuesday.
A Dutchess County judge denied an application for a preliminary injunction Monday, saying the nondisclosure agreement signed by Mary Trump, President Donald Trump's niece, when the estate of her grandfather was settled should have had "more clarity."
“The court got it right in rejecting the Trump family’s effort to squelch Mary Trump’s core political speech on important issues of public concern," Ted Boutrous, Mary Trump’s attorney, said in a statement. "The First Amendment forbids prior restraints because they are intolerable infringements on the right to participate in democracy. Tomorrow, the American public will be able to read Mary’s important words for themselves."
In a statement, Chris Bastardi, spokesperson for Mary Trump, said, “Now that the unconstitutional gag order has finally been lifted, we are sure the White House and America are looking forward to finally hearing what Mary has to say.”
Simon & Schuster, the publisher of the much-anticipated memoir, said it was "delighted" by the court's decision.
"The unfettered right to publish is a sacred American freedom and a founding principle of our republic, and we applaud the Court for affirming well-established precedents against prior restraint and pre-publication injunctions," the publisher said in a statement. "'Too Much and Never Enough' is a work of great significance, with very real implications for our national discourse, and we look forward to bringing it to a public that is clearly eager to read it."
Following the judge's ruling, Mary Trump took to Twitter to make her first post since 2018. It said, simply, "Happy Infrastructure Week."
The judge's decision follows several weeks of court battles over the publication of the tell-all book, which Simon & Schuster is releasing two weeks earlier than planned due to "high demand and extraordinary interest."
Robert Trump, the president's younger brother, had been seeking to block the book's publication on the grounds that it would violate a nondisclosure agreement Mary Trump -- the daughter of the president's deceased elder brother, Fred Trump Jr. -- signed when she settled her lawsuit over her grandfather's will. When his first attempt in Queens Surrogate’s Court, where the estate of the president’s father was settled, failed, he tried again in State Supreme Court in Dutchess County, north of New York City.
Last month, the Dutchess County judge imposed a preliminary injunction that temporarily prevented Mary Trump and Simon & Schuster from publishing the book until it could rule on a permanent injunction. At the time, Charles Harder, who represents Robert Trump, said "we will pursue this case to the very end."
In his ruling Monday, the judge cited the "potential enormous cost and logistical nightmare" in stopping the publication and recalling hundreds of thousands of books. He also referenced the ruling in a lawsuit to stop the publication of John Bolton's tell-all, "The Room Where It Happened," quoting, "By the looks of it the horse is not just out of the barn, it is out of the country.”
Mary Trump's forthcoming book is based on personal memories and conversations with family members, as well as "legal documents, bank statements, tax returns, private journals, family documents, correspondence, emails, texts, photographs, and other records," according to an author's note.
More than 600,000 copies of the book had been printed and shipped as of July 8, according to the ruling.
