A New York judge has lifted a restraining order against Mary Trump, niece of President Trump, that had prevented her from speaking publicly about her new tell-all book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man.
The Trump family had tried to block both Mary Trump and her publisher from releasing or distributing the book, which is scheduled to go out on Tuesday. An earlier ruling freed Simon & Schuster to move forward with producing the book.
The lawsuit was raised by Robert Trump, the president's younger brother. A temporary restraining order requested by the younger Trump had previously blocked the book's release, but that order had already been scaled back in an appeals court.
A judge in the initial restraining order ruling made the decision based on a 2001 nondisclosure agreement that Mary Trump signed with the Trump family following a financial settlement after her grandfather's death. But in his Monday ruling, Judge Hal Greenwald said that the agreement did not cover enough specifics and that the eventual prominence of the Trump family could not have been understood at the time of its signing.
"Too many words, with too many meanings. The cost of the litigation that was settled should have been finalized with more specifics, more clarity, if the current situation was even comprehended, at the time the Agreement
was signed," Greenwald said in his decision.
The White House has thus far repudiated the book's claims, which include an accusation that the president cheated on his SATs, as written "clearly in the author's own financial self-interest."
"The President describes the relationship he had with his father as warm and said his father was very good to him," White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews said earlier this month. "Also, the absurd SAT allegation is completely false."
Mary Trump's book is the second high-profile tell-all released in recent months. In June, former national security adviser John Bolton won a legal battle to publish his own explosive review of his time in the president's inner circle.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.