Former President Donald Trump, his sister Maryanne Trump Barry and the estate of his late brother Robert Trump tried on Tuesday to convince a New York judge to dismiss a lawsuit by Mary Trump that accused her family of swindling her out of at least $10 million.
Attorneys for the Trump siblings argued Mary Trump’s claims are time-barred by a six-year statute of limitations and prohibited by legal releases she signed in 2001 when the family settled the estate of Fred Trump Sr., the former president’s father.
The Trumps also argued Mary Trump possessed “boxes and boxes of information” about the estate settlement that should have given rise to any claims at the time.
“She writes in her book ‘we knew at the time we were being lied to,’” said Gary Friedman, an attorney representing Maryanne Trump Barry said, referencing Mary Trump’s book “Too Much and Never Enough.” “So certainly that indicates that she had some duty at that time if she felt she was being lied to, look a little further and a little deeper and not wait 20 years.”
Even if she had a sense she was being lied to, the judge said that would not constitute awareness of alleged fraud.
“I’m a little hesitant about the idea of not even allowing them to pursue that,” Judge Robert Reed said.
Mary Trump’s lawsuit she did not know about the alleged fraud until the New York Times wrote about it in October 2018. Her attorney took issue with the notion that she knew at the time she was being fleeced.
“She was being given financial statements, value statements and other documents that were tailor-made to conceal this fraud,” her attorney, John Quinn, said during a virtual hearing Tuesday.
Mary Trump’s lawsuit said former President Trump and his siblings “conspired with each other and those loyal to them to abuse their dominant position for their own benefit, breach the trust that had been placed in them, and defraud Mary out of what was rightfully hers,” a sum that her lawsuit said could be more than $10 million.
Former President Trump countersued, accusing his niece of conspiring with The New York Times in “an insidious plot to obtain confidential and highly-sensitive records which they exploited for their own benefit.”
