A New York state judge on Thursday tossed out a lawsuit intended to block the publication of a book by President Donald Trump's niece.
The book by Mary Trump, daughter of the president's brother Fred Trump Jr., is scheduled to be released July 28. She describes the book, titled "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man" as an "authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him."
Another of the president's brothers, Robert Trump, went to court to block publication, filing in Queens County Surrogate court, where the estate of the president's father, Fred Trump, was settled after his death in 1999. (Fred Trump Jr. died in 1981.) He said Mary Trump violated a confidentiality agreement that barred her from writing the kind of tell-all book that she describes.
But Judge Peter Kelly said his court is the place to settle issues over the Trump estate, not this kind of dispute. "Regardless of the outcome of this matter, the administration of this estate will not be impacted one iota," he wrote in dismissing the case.
Theodore Boutrous, a lawyer for Mary Trump, praised the judge's action.
"We hope this decision will end the matter," he said. "Democracy thrives on the free exchange of ideas, and neither this court nor any other has authority to violate the Constitution by imposing a prior restraint on core political speech."
A lawyer for Robert Trump said he will seek to block publication by filing a lawsuit in another New York court. The book's publisher, Simon & Schuster, said it was "confident we will prevail should there be further efforts to stifle this publication."
