Trump settles lawsuit against niece over tax records leak

President Trump settled a $100 million lawsuit against his niece, Mary Trump, who he accused of engaging “in an insidious plot” with The New York Times to leak confidential information for its Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 investigation into his tax and financial records.

Both parties announced the settlement in a joint filing on Tuesday, according to court documents.

“The parties are pleased to report that they have reached a settlement and anticipate being able to stipulate to the dismissal of this action with prejudice in the ensuing weeks, following completion of certain conditions precedent,” the letter reads.

Details regarding the terms of the settlement were not made public, and a formal dismissal is expected in the coming weeks. The dismissal would be with prejudice, meaning the president could not sue again in the future.

The Hill reached out to the legal teams of both the president and his niece.

The president sued his niece in 2021 alongside the Times and three of its reporters — Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russell Buettner — for its 2018 probe into the president’s tax returns, which he has long kept private.

The reporting said that Trump made at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire, aided by “dubious tax schemes.”

The trio of journalists won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting for the 18-month investigation into the Trump family’s tax history.

Trump accused his niece and the reporters of conspiring to leak sensitive records and were “motivated by a personal vendetta.” He claimed the reporters “convinced” his niece, who signed a confidentiality agreement in 2001, to “smuggle records out of her attorney’s office and turn them over to The Times.”

He also argued that the Times “capitalized” on its access to the records through its “publication of various news articles,” and accused Mary Trump of making “an ill-conceived effort to profit” off of the leak by releasing her 2020 memoir, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.”

A judge tossed the president’s lawsuit against the Times and its reporters in 2023, and ordered Trump to pay all legal costs associated with the lawsuit amounting to almost $400,000.