A New York judge on Monday lifted a temporary restraining order preventing Mary Trump from discussing her forthcoming tell-all book about her uncle President Trump and their family on the eve of the memoir’s release.
Judge Hal Greenwald of the Dutchess County Supreme Court denied Robert Trump’s bid for a preliminary injunction preventing Mary Trump or her publisher, Simon & Schuster, from publishing or distributing “Too Much Is Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.”
The development marked a win for the president’s niece and a loss for his brother, who filed multiple lawsuits to block the release on the grounds that Mary Trump was violating a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) signed by members of the Trump family. It will allow Mary Trump to promote her book when it hits bookshelves on Tuesday.
The book, portions of which were reported by The Hill and other news outlets last week, offers a scathing critique of President Trump, accusing him of a penchant for lying and cheating and describing him as a narcissist.
Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, also paints a bleak portrait of the Trump family, writing that the president’s father, Fred Trump, neglected his children and that his behavior had a lasting effect on the President Trump and other members of the family.
Greenwald in the 20-page decision dismissed Robert Trump’s argument that Mary Trump’s book violated a 2001 contract signed by the family, describing the agreement as written as overly broad. The judge also said it would be “moot” to keep the restraining order on Mary Trump in place at the current time.
“Notwithstanding that the Book has been published and distributed in great quantities, to enjoin MARY L. TRUMP at this juncture would be incorrect and serve no purpose. It would be moot,” Greenwald wrote in the decision issued Monday.
He wrote that stopping the publication and recalling hundreds of thousands of books would be an “insurmountable” task.
“By the looks of it the horse is not just out of the barn, it is out of the country,” wrote Greenwald, quoting a D.C. judge’s opinion from a case involving a book written by Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton.
Robert Trump had sought to block the book’s publication, claiming Mary Trump was violating an NDA she signed when the family settled Fred Trump’s estate. Attorneys for the president’s niece argued preventing the book’s publication would represent a First Amendment violation.
In late June, Greenwald imposed a temporary restraining order on Mary Trump and Simon & Schuster pending arguments in the case, but an appellate judge later narrowed the order to apply only to Mary Trump.
The publisher then moved up the book’s publication by two weeks to Tuesday, July 14.
Ted Boutrous, Mary Trump’s attorney, cheered the ruling as a victory for the First Amendment in a statement Monday evening.
“The court got it right in rejecting the Trump family’s effort to squelch Mary Trump’s core political speech on important issues of public concern,” Boutrous said. “The First Amendment forbids prior restraints because they are intolerable infringements on the right to participate in democracy. Tomorrow, the American public will be able to read Mary’s important words for themselves.”