JUDGE RULES MARY TRUMP CAN PUBLICIZE BOOK ABOUT UNCLE
NEW YORK — Mary Trump can talk about the highly critical book she wrote about her uncle, President Donald Trump, over the objections of the president’s brother, a judge ruled Monday as he lifted an order that had blocked her from publicizing or distributing her work.
Judge Hal B. Greenwald in Poughkeepsie, New York, rejected arguments by the brother, Robert Trump, that Mary Trump is blocked from talking about family members publicly by an agreement relatives made to settle the estate of her father after his death.
The judge said the confidentiality clauses in the 2001 agreement “viewed in the context of the current Trump family circumstances in 2020, would ... offend public policy as a prior restraint on protected speech.”
“Notwithstanding that the book has been published and distributed in great quantities, to enjoin Mary L. Trump at this juncture would be incorrect and serve no purpose. It would be moot,” the judge wrote.
Greenwald said the confidentiality agreement that settled multiple lawsuits mainly concerned the financial aspect of the deal, which isn’t as interesting now as it might have been two decades ago.
“On the other hand, the non-confidential part of the agreement, the Trump family relationships may be more interesting now in 2020 with a presidential election on the horizon,” the judge said.
He also wrote that Robert Trump had not shown any damage that the book’s publication would cause himself or the public.
Robert Trump is not frequently mentioned in the book.
Mary Trump, a trained psychologist and Donald Trump’s only niece, wrote in the book that she had “no problem calling Donald a narcissist — he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.”
The judge reversed orders he had issued temporarily blocking Mary Trump and her publisher, Simon & Schuster, from publishing or distributing a tell-all book about the president. An appeals judge already had lifted the order blocking Simon & Schuster.
The book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” was originally to be published at the end of July. The publisher announced last week it would be published Tuesday.