This may be a classic case of cow and barn door. Or toothpaste and tube. The scheduled publication of Mary Trump’s hotly anticipated Trump family tell-all is just days away—but much of the detail, salacious and incisive and fascinating in the way of all unhappy families, is already out there. Readers have been devouring excerpts and tidbits that were published by various media outlets earlier this week, including Vanity Fair. The memoir is holding the number one slot on Amazon’s bestseller list. Meanwhile, lawyers continue to battle over the publication of Mary Trump’s book, which is due to hit shelves on July 14.
There was supposed to be a hearing on Friday to adjudicate the matter, but that’s no longer happening: Mary’s representatives told me the New York State Supreme Court in Poughkeepsie has instead decided it will issue a ruling based on the legal filings that have been submitted by both sides. “No less than the First Amendment’s central meaning is at issue in this case,” said Jonathan Peters, a First Amendment law professor at the University of Georgia who’s been following the proceedings.
The saga has resulted in what people in Mary and the publisher’s camp have described as an unprecedented situation. In a move that stunned First Amendment advocates, Charles Harder, the attorney representing Robert Trump, Donald J. Trump’s brother, had initially managed to convince the court to temporarily restrain both Mary Trump—Robert and Donald’s niece—and Simon & Schuster from releasing the book, Too Much and Never Enough, which is a damning indictment of the president and the family dynamics that shaped him. An appellate court overturned Simon & Schuster’s temporary restraining order but upheld Mary’s. That gave Simon & Schuster a green light to proceed with shipping the several hundred thousand copies that have by now already been sent to bookstores. But it also meant that Mary, who is personally represented by the media-law attorney Ted Boutrous, could not participate in her publisher’s release plans, and would remain gagged from talking about or promoting the book in any way. (Neither Harder nor Boutrous got back to me this week.)
Mary retained her own P.R. counsellors at Sunshine Sachs, which released the following statement on Monday, as copies of the book were finding their way to reporters after its publication date was moved forward by two weeks: “The act by a sitting president to muzzle a private citizen is just the latest in a series of disturbing behaviors which have already destabilized a fractured nation in the face of a global pandemic. If Mary cannot comment, one can only help but wonder: what is Donald Trump so afraid of?”
On Tuesday, Harder fired back with an 83-page brief once again urging Judge Hal B. Greenwald to halt publication. At issue is a confidentiality agreement that Mary and her family members signed in 2001 to settle a dispute over the estate of her late grandfather, Fred Trump Sr. “Does a book publisher,” the brief reads, “who, having paid for the purported right to publish the book, later receiving actual notice of the fact that the author has no legal right to publish the book, then have the right to rush ahead with publication and distribute the book with full knowledge of the prohibition on publication, and thereby escape your injunction that is entered against the author? The answer to that question is clearly no. And that answer controls this case.”
In her own affidavit, filed on July 2, Mary, a clinical psychologist who lives on Long Island, lays out her case. “None of the parties to the Settlement Agreement, including my uncles Donald Trump and Robert Trump, or my aunt Maryanne Trump, has ever sought my permission to speak publicly about our family or their personal relationships with me, my brother Fred, or among each other,” the affidavit says. “I relied on the asset valuations provided to me in connection with the Settlement Agreement when I assented to it, and would not have assented to it had I believed those valuations were inaccurate, as I now understand them to be based on the special investigation done by the New York Times, the results of which were set forth in the Pulitzer-prize winning October 2, 2018 New York Times article ‘Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father.‘”