By Dartunorro Clark, Tom Winter and Jesse Rodríguez -
NBC News
Former President Donald Trump filed a $ 100 million lawsuit Tuesday against his niece, Mary Trump, and The New York Times, alleging they conspired to obtain her tax returns to publish the award-winning story about her finances. of journalistic Pulitzer.
The lawsuit claims that Mary Trump and three New York Times reporters - Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russell Buettner - were involved in an "insidious plot" and "extensive crusade" to obtain Trump's taxes.
"The defendants engaged in an insidious scheme to obtain confidential and highly sensitive records that they exploited for their own gain and used as a means to falsely legitimize their advertised works," the document states.
Craig, Barstow and Buettner received a 2019 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting for their series of stories, which provided the public with an unprecedented look at the finances of the former Republican president, who ruled the country between 2017 and 2021.
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Mary Trump acknowledged that released the tax returns Trump told The New York Times in his bestselling book of 2020 about his uncle,
Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
(Too Much and Not Enough: How my family created the most dangerous man in the world), and in interviews with the media, which the lawsuit points out.
In the book, the daughter of Trump's brother, Fred Jr, makes an "authorized portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that created him."
In a statement, Mary Trump called her uncle desperate.
“I think he's a loser and he's going to throw everything he can against the wall.
He is desperate.
The walls are closing in and he's throwing anything against the walls that he thinks he's going to hit, ”he said.
"As always with Donald, he will try to change the subject," he added.
The New York Times reported that it plans to contest the lawsuit.
"The Times' coverage of Donald Trump's taxes helped inform citizens through meticulous reporting on an issue of primary public concern," argued Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokeswoman for the newspaper.
"This lawsuit is an attempt to silence independent news organizations and we plan to vigorously defend ourselves against it."
The lawsuit was filed in New York state court in Dutchess County, which is where attorneys for the president's late brother Robert Trump filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to stop the publication of Mary Trump's book.
The 27-page lawsuit alleges that the reporter "relentlessly sought out her niece ... and convinced her to remove the records from her attorney's office and turn them over to the Times."
And he adds: "Craig, aware that the documents came from the legal proceedings of the Estate Lawsuits, ordered Mary Trump to retrieve the documents from the office of her former attorney for the Estate Lawsuits, Farrell Fritz, and to smuggle them out" .
The lawsuit alleges that Mary Trump violated a confidentiality agreement that prohibited her from publicly disclosing details of the family's finances under the terms of the settlement of Fred Trump Sr.'s estate.
The lawsuit claims that his niece and the reporters were "motivated by personal revenge and his desire to gain fame, notoriety, acclaim and financial gain" and to "advance his political agenda."
