Trump's Niece: I Want My Money Back

Mary Trump sues president, uncle, and aunt, accuses them of cheating her out of millions
By Newser Editors,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 24, 2020 11:48 AM CDT
Trump's Niece: I Want My Money Back
This combination photo shows the cover art for "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man," left, and a portrait of author Mary L. Trump.   (Simon & Schuster, left, and Peter Serling/Simon & Schuster via AP)

"For Donald J. Trump, his sister Maryanne, and their late brother Robert, fraud was not just the family business—it was a way of life." It may sound like the first sentence of a tell-all memoir, but it's actually the first line of a new lawsuit filed by Mary Trump, the president's niece, reports the New York Times. In her suit, the 55-year-old is re-raising allegations she first detailed in her book about her famous uncle. She accuses the trio from that first sentence of cheating her out of tens of millions of dollars after her father, Fred Jr., died when she was a teenager, reports the Hill. Mary Trump says her uncles and aunt took advantage of her youth and "used their position of power to con her into signing her interests away" in the family real estate empire.

For example, she writes that they collected "exorbitant management fees, consulting fees, and salaries" for managing the properties in which she had a stake, vastly undervalued them with help from an appraiser who was in on the scheme, and later pressured her financially into signing over the bulk of her stake, reports CNN. These three allegations are detailed under sections called "Grift," "Devaluing," and "The Squeeze Out" in the lawsuit. "I am bringing this case," she writes, "to hold them accountable and to recover what is rightfully mine." Trump, who has previously denied allegations made by his niece, has not commented on the lawsuit, nor have his siblings. (More Mary Trump stories.)

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