Copies of a family memoir by Mary Trump are seen in an Alexandria, Virginia, bookstore on July 14. Trump on Thursday sued her uncle, President Donald Trump, and his siblings for allegedly cheating her out her inheritance. File photo by Michael Reynolds/EPA-EFE
Sept. 24 (UPI) -- Mary Trump, the niece of President Donald Trump, filed a civil lawsuit in New York Thursday claiming the president and his siblings conspired to cheat her out of an inheritance worth millions.
The civil suit, filed in New York state court, accuses Donald Trump, his sister Maryanne Trump Barry and late brother Robert Trump, of executing a scheme in which they allegedly worked together to deprive Mary Trump of her rightful share of the real estate empire amassed by her grandfather, Fred Trump Sr.
The suit names the president in his personal capacity, Barry and Robert Trump's estate as defendants. Robert Trump died last month.
Mary Trump is the daughter of the president's older brother, Fred Trump Jr., who died in 1981 when she was 16 years old. Fred Trump Sr. died in 1999, after which the president and his siblings allegedly "fleeced her of tens of millions of dollars or more" while consolidating their control of the patriarch's holdings.
Mary Trump claims a trustee appointed by Donald Trump and his siblings to look out for her interests when she was a teenager, Irwin Durben, actually worked with them to "siphon funds away from her interests, conceal their grift, and deceive her about the true value of what she inherited."
They accomplished this through fraudulent financial moves and threatening to bankrupt her interests and cancel a healthcare policy sorely needed by her family, her lawyers alleged.
The accusations were previously made in Mary Trump's tell-all family memoir, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, which was released in July after winning a high-profile legal battle against Robert Trump.
"We now know that under the guise of supposedly taking care of their teenage niece after her father's untimely death, Donald, Robert and Maryanne Trump perpetrated elaborate schemes to defraud Mary Trump in order to enrich themselves to the tune of millions of dollars at her expense," attorney Roberta Kaplan said.
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
