NEW YORK – Former United States president Donald Trump yesterday filed a US$100 million (RM419 million) suit against his estranged niece Mary and The New York Times, alleging they engaged in “an insidious plot” to obtain his tax returns for the paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into his finances.
The suit, filed in Dutchess County, New York state, said NYT reporters Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russ Buettner conducted “an extensive crusade to obtain Donald J. Trump’s confidential tax records”.
“The defendants engaged in an insidious plot to obtain confidential and highly sensitive records that they exploited for their own benefit and utilised as a means of falsely legitimising their publicised works,” said the suit, alleging that they were “motivated by a personal vendetta”.
NYT and the three journalists won the Pulitzer in 2019 for their investigation into the Trump family’s finances, which the Pulitzer Prize Board said “debunked his claims of self-made wealth and revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges”.
The paper’s article alleged that Trump received more than US$400 million in today’s terms from his father’s real estate empire, much of it through fraudulent tax schemes.
Mary was the daughter of the eldest Trump brother Fred Trump Jr, who died in 1981 from complications due to alcoholism.
In her no-holds-barred 2020 memoir, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, she revealed that she was the primary source for the NYT investigation.
‘Loser’
The 27-page suit asserted that the NYT reporters “relentlessly sought out his niece, Mary L. Trump, and convinced her to smuggle the records out of her attorney’s office and turn them over to NYT”.
NYT reporter Craig tweeted early today: “I knocked on Mary Trump’s door. She opened it. I think they call that journalism.”
The suit alleged that by providing information, Mary was in violation of a non-disclosure agreement signed in 2001 after a settlement over the estate of the ex-president’s father, Fred Trump Sr.
Trump is seeking US$100 million in compensation and damages, as well as all the proceeds from his niece’s book.
In a statement quoted by NBC, Mary called her uncle “a loser”.
“It’s desperation. The walls are closing in, and he is throwing anything against the wall that he thinks will stick.
“As is always the case with Donald, he’ll try and change the subject.”
Trump is under investigation in New York for tax fraud and other alleged wrongdoings relating to the financial activities of his Trump Organisation.
The Justice Department last month also ordered the Treasury to provide a congressional committee with six years of records that Trump has long refused to make public.
US presidents are not required by law to release details of their personal finances, but every American leader since Richard Nixon has done so.
Trump had repeatedly said he would release them pending an audit, but ultimately broke with the tradition.
“NYT’s coverage of Donald Trump’s taxes helped inform citizens through meticulous reporting on a subject of overriding public interest,” said Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokesman for the paper, in a statement quoted by US media.
“This suit is an attempt to silence independent news organisations, and we plan to vigorously defend against it.” – AFP, September 22, 2021
