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Former President Donald Trump filed a complaint against The New York Times, three of his reporters, and his niece, claiming they had instigated an “insidious plot” to obtain his private archives for a story about his tax history.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Dutchess County, New York, by lawyer Alina Habba, alleges the newspaper convinced Mary Trump to “smuggle files out of her attorney’s office and hand them over to The temperatureDespite signing a confidentiality agreement in 2001 after settling a controversial legal battle over the will of Frederick Trump, Donald’s father and Mary’s grandfather.
The new lawsuit seeks damages “in an amount to be determined at trial, but not less than a hundred million dollars” from both Mary Trump and the Times.
This follows a complaint filed by Charles Harder on behalf of Donald Trump’s brother Robert to try to prevent Mary Trump and publisher Simon & Schuster from publishing his memoir, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Made the World’s Most Dangerous Man.
Judge Hal Greenwald ruled in that case that the 2001 confidentiality agreement was too loosely defined to prevent him from writing about the sitting president and noted that his editor was not a signatory to that agreement. Robert Trump died in August 2020.
While Times journalists David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner, who won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory report in 2019 for what they revealed about the taxes the former president refused to disclose and how little he paid in federal income taxes, were also not party to the confidentiality agreement that Mary Trump signed in 2001, the retrial of the former president claims they were “directly responsible”, citing her interview with Molly Jong -Fast on The Daily Beast’s The New Abnormal podcast while claiming reporters were “motivated, at least in part, by their real nastiness” towards Trump:
Molly Jong-Fast: You were ultimately the source of the tax story.
Mary Trump: Yeah, uh, I’m really, really proud of it. But I have to be honest with you, I didn’t even remember that I had [the Confidential Records]. It’s all thanks to the brilliant Susanne Craig for, one, reminding me that I had them and, two, trying to convince so effectively and tenaciously – I mean it took her months before me – so it is entirely thanks to her.
“I think he’s a fucking loser, and he’s going to throw everything against the wall he can,” said Mary Trump of her uncle’s new costume. “It’s desperation. The walls close and he throws anything that might stick against the wall. As always with Donald, he will try to change the subject.
In something of the same spirit in which the former president has often attributed to himself the increase in ratings on news networks that he considered his enemies, the lawsuit notes that “the article of 2018 has received record attention, garnering more views than any previous article. in The temperature’ historical “, such as” The share price of The temperature increased 7.4% in the week of the article’s publication 2018. ”
A spokesperson for the newspaper told The Beast on Tuesday night that “The Times’ coverage of Donald Trump’s taxes helped educate citizens through meticulous reporting on a matter of major public interest. This lawsuit is an attempt to silence independent news agencies and we plan to vigorously defend ourselves against it. “
A spokeswoman for the former president did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Shortly after the publication of Mary Trump’s book, she sued President Donald Trump; his sister, retired Federal Court of Appeal Judge Maryanne Trump Barry; and the executor of the estate of his brother Robert Trump, who had died months earlier, accusing them of allegedly stealing millions of dollars from him after the 1981 death of his father, Frederick Trump Jr.
“For Donald J. Trump, his sister Maryanne and their late brother Robert, fraud was not just a family business, it was a way of life,” says his lawsuit. “All in all, they stole tens of millions of dollars or more from him. “
Asawin Suebsaeng contributed to this report.
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