24th September, 2020
U.S. President Donald Trump has been sued by his niece, Mary Trump, accusing him and other family members of cheating her in the family business.
Mary, who recently published a tell-all book on Donald Trump, claims she was cheated out of tens of millions of dollars from the inheritance.
The complaint was filed in a New York state court in Manhattan on Thursday.
It has Donald Trump, his sister Maryanne Trump Barry, and the estate of his brother Robert Trump, who died in August, as defendants, in the case which alleges “rampant fraud” and conspiracy.
According to Bloomberg, Mary Trump in her suit alleges that Donald Trump, along with late Robert Trump and their sister Maryanne, failed to follow through on a pledge to “watch over her interests as fiduciaries” after she inherited minority interests in the family business following the death of her father Fred Trump, the president’s older brother, according to the complaint.
“They lied,” Mary Trump said in the complaint. “Rather than protect Mary’s interests, they designed and carried out a complex scheme to siphon funds away from her interests, conceal their grift, and deceive her about the true value of what she had inherited.”
The suit also alleges that when Donald Trump’s father, Fred, died in 1999, Trump and his siblings tried to “squeeze Mary out altogether.” Mary Trump claims her aunt and uncles threatened to bankrupt her interests and cut her off from the health insurance she claims was keeping her infant nephew with cerebral palsy alive.
Mary Trump also claims, the president and his siblings gave her fraudulent valuations as part of a 2001 settlement agreement over the wills and “forced her to sign,” the suit says.
The family members all signed a confidentiality agreement as part of the settlement. Robert Trump, who died in August, sued Mary Trump in a failed effort to block the publication of her tell-all memoir, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.” She claims in the book that when she agreed to the settlement she was told the family estate was worth $30 million, while paperwork she unearthed years later showed it was worth closer to $1 billion.
The memoir, which portrays Donald Trump as a liar and narcissist who was coddled by an overbearing father, an incurious press and reckless banks, went on sale in July as planned after a judge refused to issue an injunction against its release.