Trump’s niece wins legal battle over tell-all book

Mary Trump’s book about her uncle, US President Donald Trump, will be released after a weeks-long court battle.

A judge vacated a temporary injunction against President Trump's niece Mary Trump, right, and ending the fight to stop publication of her book "Too Much Is Never Enough". Pictures:AFP/Supplied

A New York judge dealt the Trump family a loss on Monday, vacating a temporary injunction against President Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, and ending a weeks-long legal battle to block the release of her tell-all book.

Mr. Trump’s younger brother, Robert S. Trump, had fought the publication of “Too Much and Never Enough” in court, arguing the book included details that, if published, would violate a confidentiality agreement signed by Ms. Trump in 2001, as a condition of financial settlement stemming from a familial inheritance dispute.

Judge Hal B. Greenwald, of Dutchess County Supreme Court, had issued a temporary injunction against Ms. Trump and Simon & Schuster, the publisher, two weeks ago. The next day, an appellate judge reversed course and allowed the company to move forward with publication as planned.

Already printed and shipped

On Monday, Judge Greenwald vacated the order against Ms. Trump, ruling that any bar against her would “serve no purpose.” As of July 8, more than 600,000 copies of “Too Much and Never Enough” have been printed and shipped to booksellers nationwide, according to court documents.

“There is no doubt that the Book is out in the public eye in significant quantities,” Judge Greenwald wrote. “Removing hundreds of thousands of books from all types of booksellers,” he said, would be “a logistical nightmare” and “an insurmountable task.” Simon & Schuster, the publishing arm of ViacomCBS Inc., said 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 First Amendment protects against prior restraint, meaning that the government can’t censor speech before it happens.

The book has already been printed, shipped and “is out in the public eye”, the judge said. Picture: Twitter

Courts are even more reluctant to block speech about matters of public concern. “Speech is so important, that courts have ignored how the information has been obtained, and still denied injunctive relief,” Judge Greenwald wrote in Monday’s ruling.

Ms. Trump’s memoir, which ranked No. 1 on Amazon’s Top 100 bestseller list Monday evening, was originally scheduled to be published July 28. Simon & Schuster moved up the date by two weeks after the temporary restraining order against the publisher was overturned.

Harsh portrait

The book paints a harsh portrait of the dynamics that shaped Mr. Trump’s family. Ms. Trump writes that she disagreed with the policies of Mr. Trump and leaked key financial documents related to the family to the New York Times because “I had to take Donald down.” The author is the daughter of the late Frederick Trump Jr., the oldest son of real-estate magnate Fred Trump, and the brother of President Trump and three other siblings. Fred Trump died in 1999; his wife, Mary Anne Trump, followed in 2000.

Charles J. Harder, attorney for Robert S. Trump, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“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,” said a spokesperson for Ms. Trump.

Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., counsel for Ms. Trump, said: “The First Amendment forbids prior restraints because they are intolerable infringements on the right to participate in democracy.” On Monday, Judge Greenwald agreed. “In the vernacular of first year law students, ‘[Constitutional] law trumps Contracts,’ ” he wrote.

The Wall Street Journal