Judge Rules That Mary Trump Tell-All Can Move Forward Pending Hearing

Simon & Schuster will release the book on July 28

U.S. President Donald Trump speaking at the White House in July 2020
President Donald Trump speaks at a Spirit of America Showcase on July 1.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Well, that was quick. Just one day after a judge temporarily blocked the publication of Mary Trump’s forthcoming tell-all book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, a New York appellate judge has overturned that decision. The publisher Simon & Schuster can move ahead with its plans to release the book from President Trump’s niece on July 28.

Justice Alan D. Scheinkman ruled that Simon & Schuster was not a party to (and thus not bound by) Mary Trump’s confidentiality agreement, writing, “Unlike Ms. Trump, S&S has not agreed to surrender or relinquish any of its First Amendment rights.” However, as The New York Times points out, the ruling “put off addressing a central aspect of the bitter spat about the manuscript that has been roiling all month in the Trump family: whether, by writing the book, Ms. Trump violated a confidentiality agreement put in place nearly 20 years ago after a struggle over the will of her grandfather, Fred Trump Sr., Donald Trump’s father.”

“We support Mary L. Trump’s right to tell her story in Too Much and Never Enough, a work of great interest and importance to the national discourse that fully deserves to be published for the benefit of the American public,” Simon & Schuster said in a statement on Wednesday. “As all know, there are well-established precedents against prior restraint and pre-publication injunctions.”

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Bonnie Stiernberg

Bonnie Stiernberg

Bonnie Stiernberg is InsideHook’s Managing Editor. She was Music Editor at Paste Magazine for seven years, and she has written about music and pop culture for Rolling Stone, Glamour, Billboard, Vice and more.
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