Donald Trump is suing the New York Times, three of his reporters, and his granddaughter Mary asking for “at least $ 100 million” in compensation for a 2018 series of articles about his financial and fiscal situation. According to the former US president, they were all part of “an insidious plot” to gain access to confidential data, motivated “by personal revenge”.
“He’s a f … loser,” said niece Mary Trump, with a Trumpian-style response reported by the Daily beast, the site that first revealed the story. At the centre of the conflict is a series of articles on Trump’s manoeuvres to evade taxes on $ 413 million from his father’s real estate assets. For that investigation, three journalists Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russell Buettner, were awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2019.
In his quote, the former president claims that the three reporters “convinced” his niece “to steal documents from her lawyer’s office and give them to the New York Times,” despite a confidentiality agreement that Mary Trump signed in 2001. Furthermore, Mary would have taken advantage of the hype of the articles to publish her memoir: “Too much and never enough: how my family created the most dangerous man in the world”. Trump had previously tried, unsuccessfully, to block Mary’s book by citing the confidentiality clause. And now the niece calls the quote a move dictated by “despair”. “Try to throw anything against the wall to see if it sticks to it,” he said.