The publisher of Mary Trump’s tell-all book can go ahead for now with publication plans following a ruling by a New York appellate judge on Wednesday, which reversed a lower court’s decision to pause the publication of a much-anticipated account by President Trump’s niece.
The book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” according to court papers filed by publisher Simon & Schuster and obtained by The New York Times, has allegedly already been printed and sold tens of thousands of copies. It is also listed as a best seller on Amazon.
The account is anticipated to reveal how Mary Trump contributed to a report from The Times on the Trump family’s tax schemes.
The text was central to a legal dispute about whether, by writing the book, Trump’s niece had violated a two decades old confidentiality agreement that she signed after a struggle over the will of Donald Trump’s father Fred Trump Sr.
In his decision, Judge Alan Scheinkman ruled that Simon & Schuster was not a party to the confidentiality agreement and therefore could not be bound by it in spite of a Tuesday ruling that placed a temporary restraining order on the book’s publication. While the restraining order was lifted on Simon & Schuster, the court left the temporary restraining order in place for Mary Trump until a hearing scheduled for July 10.
“Unlike Ms. Trump,” Scheinkman wrote, “S&S has not agreed to surrender or relinquish any of its First Amendment rights.” The publishers had earlier argued they were unaware of Mary Trump’s signing of a confidentiality agreement.
Simon & Schuster quickly celebrated the decision as a win in a statement on Wednesday night, calling the book a work of “real interest and importance” that “fully deserves to be published for the benefit of the American public.”
“As all know, there are well-established precedents against prior restraint and pre-publication injunctions, and we remain confident that the preliminary injunction will be denied,” the publishing company added.
While Scheinkman declined to rule on the question of whether Mary Trump had violated the agreement, he said it it was reasonable for a prominent family to agree to keep “intimate family matters” away from the public.
He also said, however, that the 20-year-old agreement to protect the Trump family’s privacy may have been altered by the fact that Donald Trump had become the president during that time.
The book is scheduled to be released at the end of July.
