Donald Trump settles lawsuit against niece over publication of tax records

Trump said his niece violated confidentiality provisions of a 2001 settlement over the estate of Fred Trump Sr.

NEW YORK - US President Donald Trump has settled his lawsuit accusing his niece Mary Trump of improperly leaking information to the New York Times for its Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 probe into his finances and his alleged effort to avoid taxes.

Both sides announced a settlement in a letter filed on June 16 with a New York state court in Manhattan, and expect to seek a formal dismissal in the coming weeks.

No terms were disclosed. A dismissal would be with prejudice, meaning the US president could not sue again.

Trump said his niece violated confidentiality provisions of a 2001 settlement over the estate of Fred Trump Sr., who was Donald Trump’s father and Mary Trump’s grandfather. Fred Trump died in 1999. Mary Trump, a psychologist, identified herself as a Times source in her 2020 tell-all best seller, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man. In May 2024, a state appeals court found a “substantial” legal basis for Donald Trump’s confidentiality claim, but said he might deserve only “nominal damages” rather than the US$100 million (S$128.29 million) he sought.

Lawyers for Mary Trump argued that the lawsuit violated a New York state law barring frivolous cases designed to silence critics’ free speech.

A judge overseeing the case dismissed Donald Trump’s related claims against the Times and the reporters in 2023, and later ordered him to pay US$392,639 of their legal fees. The same judge in 2022 dismissed Mary Trump’s separate lawsuit accusing the president and two of his siblings of defrauding her out of a multimillion-dollar inheritance. REUTERS