Mary Trump is free to talk about and distribute the highly critical book she wrote about her uncle Donald Trump, a US judge has ruled.
State Supreme Court Judge Hal B Greenwald, in Poughkeepsie, New York, rejected arguments by the president's brother Robert Trump that Ms Trump is blocked from talking about family members publicly by an agreement relatives made to settle the estate of her father after his death.
The judge said the confidentiality clauses in the 2001 agreement, “viewed in the context of the current Trump family circumstances in 2020, would ‘offend public policy as a prior restraint on protected speech'”.
“Notwithstanding that the book has been published and distributed in great quantities, to enjoin Mary L Trump at this juncture would be incorrect and serve no purpose. It would be moot,” he wrote.
Judge Greenwald said the confidentiality agreement that settled multiple lawsuits mainly concerned the financial aspect of the deal, which is not as interesting now as it might have been two decades ago.
“On the other hand the non-confidential part of the agreement, the Trump family relationships may be more interesting now in 2020 with a presidential election on the horizon,” he said.
He also wrote that Robert Trump had not shown any damage that the book’s publication would cause himself or the public.
Robert Trump is not frequently mentioned in the book, which seeks to trace how family members were affected by the president’s father, a successful real estate owner, and how the president may have developed some of the traits that have been most apparent at the White House.
Ms Trump, a trained psychologist and Donald Trump’s only niece, wrote in the book that she had “no problem calling Donald a narcissist – he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders.
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The judge reversed orders he had issued temporarily blocking Ms Trump and her publisher, Simon & Schuster, from publishing or distributing a tell-all book about the president. An appeals judge had already lifted the order blocking Simon & Schuster.
On the eve of its publication, Ms Trump’s book was ranked No 1 on the Amazon best-seller list.