Sep 24, 2020 - Politics & Policy

Mary Trump claims in lawsuit that the president and his siblings "swindled" her inheritance

Orion Rummler

Mary Trump's book is propped on top of a larger stack of books — Photo: Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

President Trump's niece filed a lawsuit on Thursday alleging that the president and other family members "swindled her" out of an inheritance worth tens of millions, per the suit filed with New York's Supreme Court.

The big picture: Mary Trump's lawsuit, filed two months after her memoir portrayed her uncle as a dangerous sociopath, references a massive 2018 New York Times investigation that found the Trump family reportedly engaged in dubious tax schemes, including outright fraud, in the 1990s.

Details: Trump's sister Maryanne Trump Barry and his younger brother Robert Trump are also named in the lawsuit and accused alongside the president of fraud and civil conspiracy.

What she's saying: "For Donald J. Trump, his sister Maryanne, and their late brother Robert, fraud was not just the family business — it was a way of life," the complaint says, claiming that the family "concocted scheme after scheme to cheat on their taxes, swindle their business partners, and jack up rents on their low-income tenants."

The other side: "The only fraud committed there was Mary Trump recording one of her relatives," White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters Thursday, when asked for comment on the lawsuit.

In hours of recordings made secretly by Mary Trump and leaked to the Washington Post, Maryanne Trump Barry said that the president has "no principles," is prone to "lying" and "you can’t trust him."
The White House and Trump campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Read the complaint.

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Mary Trump claims in lawsuit that the president and his siblings "swindled" her inheritance

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