Donald Trump asks court to throw out niece’s case

Mary Trump claims she was cut out of family’s real estate fortune

Donald Trump and niece Mary Trump (Peter Serling via Simon & Schuster, Getty)
Donald Trump and niece Mary Trump (Peter Serling via Simon & Schuster, Getty)

Taking time out from issuing a blizzard of 11th-hour pardons, Donald Trump has asked a New York court to dismiss a case filed by his niece.

Mary Trump, who published a tell-all book about her uncle in July, claimed the president and his siblings fraudulently cut her out of the family’s real estate fortune. But in a filing Wednesday, the president said the matter was settled in 2001, Bloomberg News reported.

“Plaintiff makes outlandish and incredulous accusations in her complaint, which is laden with conspiracy theories more befitting a Hollywood screenplay than a pleading in a legal action,” the filing said. “Plaintiff even uses the thematic structure of a play to contrive a decades-long sinister plot in which she claims her aunt and uncles conspired with reputable lawyers, appraisers and other professionals to defraud her.”

Maryanne Trump Barry, the president’s sister, is also seeking to get the claims dismissed, stating in a separate filing that the younger Trump’s lawsuit “offers nothing more than conclusory allegations” that the Trump siblings “concealed the alleged fraud.”

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“Her own public statements contradict any claim that she could not have discovered the alleged fraud years earlier,” the filing added.

Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump Sr., died in 1999, leaving his estate to his four children. Mary Trump and her brother contested the will — their father, Fred Trump Jr., had died in 1981 — causing a standoff over medical coverage.

The parties reached a settlement in 2001, which Mary Trump claims was based on fraudulent valuations. The case continues.

[Bloomberg News] — Sylvia Varnham O’Regan