In her best-selling memoir, Mary L. Trump, President Trump’s niece, told a family story that detailed the ways in which she claims her relatives — the president among them — tricked, bullied and ultimately cheated her out of an inheritance worth tens of millions of dollars. On Thursday, more than two months after the book was published and a little more than one month before the election, Ms. Trump told her story again — this time in a lawsuit. The suit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, accused Mr. Trump, his sister Maryanne Trump Barry and their brother Robert Trump, who died in August, of fraud and civil conspiracy. It seeks to recover the millions of dollars Ms. Trump claims to have lost. In its first sentence, the lawsuit says that, for the Trumps, “fraud was not just the family business — it was a way of life.” Beginning in the 1980s, the suit contends, the president and his siblings took control of the New York City real estate empire their father, Fred Trump Sr., had built and “exploited it to enrich themselves” to the detriment of everyone around them.

Source: New York Times September 24, 2020 15:05 UTC