It's unknown if a Trump family reunion is being planned at the moment, but if so, the organizers should take care not to put President Donald Trump and Mary Trump at the same table. Their legal feud remains ongoing. On June 5, 2025, a New York judge ruled that President Trump's current occupation doesn't create a barrier to proceeding with his lawsuit against her.
Mary Trump, a bestselling author with a PhD in psychology, is the estranged niece of the president. She sought to freeze the trial until after Donald Trump was no longer in office. President Trump is suing Mary Trump for breach of contract for providing the New York Times with some of his financial records. Claiming she was bound by a non-disclosure clause, he's seeking over $100 million in damages.
Quite the History of Legal Battles
President Trump and his niece have been at legal loggerheads for decades, beginning with a spirited brawl over Fred Trump's will. Mary Trump sued Donald Trump, claiming that her uncle and his siblings had exerted control over the elderly Fred Trump, who was suffering from Alzheimer's Disease during his final years, to limit her inheritance from her grandfather. It was settled in 1991, with Mary selling her share of the family business.
That settlement would become the focus of a lawsuit filed in 2020 against Donald Trump and his siblings by his niece, who claimed she'd been defrauded in the earlier settlement. The suit was ultimately dismissed in 2022, and her appeal was denied in 2023.
The current lawsuit being brought by President Trump against Mary Trump is based on her actions in 2018, when she gave his financial records to reporters at the New York Times. The investigation that resulted revealed a history of Fred and Donald Trump's questionable tax returns and earned the journalists the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting.
Donald Trump filed suit against Mary and the New York Times in 2021, claiming breach of contract by Mary in revealing the financial information she possessed as part of the disclosure over her grandfather's will. Mary had outed herself as the reporters' source in her 2020 bestseller "Too Much and Never Enough," a scathing unauthorized biography about her uncle.
In May 2023, the suit against the reporters was dismissed under First Amendment protections. Donald Trump was ordered to pay the New York Times' legal fees. The lawsuit against Mary Trump alone was allowed to proceed after surviving her appeal in June 2023.
Have Your People Get in Touch With My People
The crux of the lawsuit is President Trump's claim that part of the 1991 estate agreement included a non-disclosure clause that covered both Fred Sr. and Donald's tax records. He asserts that Mary Trump "smuggled" his tax records out of her lawyer's office for later publication in violation of the clause. He's seeking over $100 million in damages.
Mary Trump's attorneys argued that President Trump's office would cause impassable obstacles for fairly litigating the lawsuit. They also cited his belief, shown by his reaction to other rulings, that he considers himself above any state-level decisions. Claiming that problems had already arisen with discovery and scheduling the President for a deposition, the defense suggested that these issues would vanish if the suit were paused until after his term in office expired.
New York Supreme Court Justice Robert Reed disagreed, noting that as the plaintiff, it was up to Donald Trump to follow the rules of court procedure to keep the case moving. Since there have been no actual violations of discovery rules or ignoring of court orders, he allowed the case to proceed. If President Trump does falter, the defense could again file for a dismissal.
Allowing a sitting president to continue with a lawsuit against someone else creates an interesting double standard, as they are immune to civil lawsuits while in office.
Related Resources
- Presidential Immunity to Criminal and Civil Suits (FindLaw's Article II)
- Can I Sue for Breach of Contract? (FindLaw's Filing a Lawsuit)
- Fact-Finding: Understanding the Discovery Process (FindLaw's Accident and Injury Legal Guide)
