Former President Donald J. Trump can proceed with a lawsuit against Mary L. Trump, his estranged niece, for her role as a source for a New York Times investigation into Trump’s finances, a New York state appeals court said Thursday. York.
The ruling, by the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court, was a victory for Trump, although it did not address the substance of his claim: that his niece should be held liable for violating a confidentiality agreement when she provided financial documents to a team. of Times journalists.
Those documents became the basis for a series of news articles examining what The Times called Trump’s history of tax evasion and “outright fraud.” The series received a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2019.
Trump sued the Times in 2021 over the articles, accusing the news organization of improperly inducing his niece to provide the documents. Last year, a New York judge dismissed Trump’s allegations against The Times and its journalists; The judge also ordered the former president to pay the newspaper’s legal fees.
In claims against his niece, Trump has argued that she violated the terms of a confidentiality agreement that was part of an agreement related to the will of Fred C. Trump, the former president’s father, who died in 1999.
Mrs. Trump, who revealed her role as a source for The Times in a 2020 memoir, maintains that the First Amendment protected her actions.
In a three-page opinion Thursday, the state appeals court upheld a lower court ruling that there was “a substantial legal basis” for Trump’s breach of contract claim. The opinion also noted several issues that would need to be resolved for Trump to prevail, including the precise duration of the nondisclosure provision Trump signed and whether the former president could prove that he suffered harm as a result of the disclosures.
The case now returns to the New York State Supreme Court, the state’s trial court.
A Trump lawyer, Alina Habba, said the former president would continue his lawsuit to ensure that Trump is “held fully accountable for his flagrant and egregious breach of contract.”
A Trump lawyer, Anne Champion, said she was “disappointed” by the ruling. “The First Amendment gives us every right to criticize candidates for office, and Mary has made valuable contributions to the public’s understanding of the former president with her unique perspective as a family member,” she said in a statement. “She should not be silenced and we are confident that she will be vindicated as the case progresses.”