Former President Donald Trump filed a $100 million lawsuit against The New York Times and his niece Mary Trump on Tuesday, alleging his confidential tax documents were improperly shared.
The lawsuit, which was filed in the New York Supreme Court, alleged that New York Times reporters Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russell Buettner pressured Mary Trump to share the former president’s tax documents for an article they were working on in 2018, the Associated Press reported.
“The brazenness of the defendants’ actions cannot be understated,” the lawsuit said. “A group of journalists with The New York Times, in the middle of an extensive crusade to obtain Donald J. Trump’s confidential tax records, relentlessly sought out his niece, Mary L. Trump, and convinced her to smuggle the records out of her attorney’s office and turn them over to The Times.”
Trump’s lawsuit stated that the reporters understood their actions were illegal since they used burner phones to communicate about the story and offered Mary Trump anonymity as a source.
Mary Trump participated in the allegedly illegal sharing of documents because she was “motivated by a personal vendetta,” the lawsuit said. She admitted to being the NYT’s anonymous source in a 2020 book highlighting her relationship with her uncle.
via joemiller