NEW YORK (Reuters) – Donald Trump has defeated his niece Mary Trump in a lawsuit where she accused the former U.S. president and two of his siblings of defrauding her out of a multimillion-dollar inheritance.
In a decision on Monday, Justice Robert Reed of a New York state court in Manhattan said Mary Trump released her claims against her relatives in a 2001 settlement over the estate of Donald Trump’s father Fred Trump Sr.
Reed said the settlement, which gave Mary Trump with more than $2.7 million, was neither “a product of overreaching and unfair circumstances” nor “a case where defendants’ alleged threats preluded the exercise of plaintiff’s free will.”
Lawyers for Mary Trump had no immediate comment.
The case had its roots in the 1981 death of Mary’s father, Fred Trump Jr., Donald Trump’s older brother, who left Mary, then 16, a profitable real estate portfolio.
Mary Trump claimed that her uncles Donald and Robert Trump and aunt Maryanne Trump Barry were supposed to protect her interests but instead “squeezed” her out through the 2001 settlement, fleecing her out of tens of millions of dollars.
Maryanne Trump Barry is a retired federal judge. Robert Trump died in August 2020.
A lawyer for Donald Trump and Robert Trump’s estate did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Barry’s lawyer Gary Freidman declined to comment.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New Yorkd; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
