Aimee Walker
Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against his niece Mary Trump and The New York Times for $100m in damages over tax records.
The lawsuit names three reporters; Susanne Craig, David Barston, and Russell Buettner, and it accused them of ‘relentlessly’ pursuing Mary to obtain confidential records exchanged in a family dispute.
The niece of the former president’s lawyer said the case is ‘doomed to failure’.
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He said: “This is the latest in a long line of frivolous lawsuits by Donald Trump that target truthful speech and important journalism on issues of public concern.
“It is doomed to failure like the rest of his baseless efforts to chill freedom of speech and of the press.”
The case was filed with the trial-level New York Supreme Court in Dutchess County.
A New York Times spokesperson said: “The Times’s coverage of Donald Trump’s taxes helped inform citizens through meticulous reporting on a subject of overriding public interest.
“This lawsuit is an attempt to silence independent news organizations and we plan to vigorously defend against it.”
Mary Trump confirmed in her own book last year, ‘Too Much and Never Enough,’ that she had provided documents to The Times and that reporter Susanne Craig provided her with a burner phone.
She said: “I hadn’t fully grasped how much of a risk I was taking.
“If anybody in my family found out what I was doing, there would be repercussions — I knew how vindictive they were — but there was no way to gauge how serious the consequences might be.”
The paper published an article in 2018 that accused Trump of ‘participating in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including fraud’.
It said the article was based on a ‘vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records’.
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