Left: President Donald Trump gestures during a reception for Republican members of Congress in the East Room of the White House, Tuesday, July 22, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson). Right: Mary Trump discussing her book "Who Could Ever Love You: A Family Memoir" at The 92nd Street Y on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024, in New York (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP).
President Donald Trump's niece Mary Trump quietly convinced an appellate court that she is entitled as a matter of law to documents that could help her prove she was fraudulently induced into a 2001 Trump family settlement after Fred Trump Sr.'s death, raising the prospect of a "final resolution" in a years-old dispute.
On April 30, a panel of judges on the New York Supreme Court's Appellate Division, First Department, "unanimously reversed, on the law, without costs," a lower court ruling that had "improvidently" denied Mary Trump's motion to compel Trump family "Estate Valuation Materials" through discovery.
Justice Robert Reed, the state judge who dismissed onetime plaintiff Mary Trump's inheritance fraud lawsuit against her uncle in 2022, went on to repeatedly deny her efforts to compel discovery after she was separately sued for disclosing "confidential information" in the "tell-all" book, "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man."
The president's legal team, headed by attorney Michael Madaio, additionally alleged that Mary Trump, the New York Times, and Times reporters "maliciously conspir[ed] against him" in an "insidious plot" to expose his confidential tax records and accuse him of "outright fraud" in the Pulitzer Prize-winning story headlined, "Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father."
Reed relied on his 2022 ruling dismissing Mary Trump's suit to bar her discovery requests, which her lawyer Ted Boutrous argued on appeal would "result in significant prejudice to Dr. Trump who, for all practical purposes, is now unable to effectively pursue one of her live affirmative defenses."
Despite the president's argument against his niece's attempt to "repackage her previously-dismissed fraud theory," the appellate court ultimately decided to boost the daughter of Fred Trump Jr.'s "affirmative defense" to her uncle's breach of contract lawsuit.
"Supreme Court improvidently exercised its discretion in denying defendant's motion. CPLR 3101(a) directs 'full disclosure of all matter material and necessary in the prosecution or defense of an action,' and is to be 'interpreted liberally to require disclosure, upon request, of any facts bearing on the controversy which will assist preparation for trial by sharpening issues and reducing delay and prolixity,'" the court explained. "These principles entitle defendant to the requested discovery material to establish her affirmative defense."
The president's team appears to have shifted strategy as a result of the ruling.
As recently as January, the plaintiff had designs on moving forward to trial, but the calculus has clearly changed — such that a short extension of time to comply with discovery deadlines may now lead the case to a "final resolution."
"The Parties respectfully jointly request that the compliance conference be taken off calendar and that the Court grant a two-week extension of outstanding discovery deadlines," a May 12 filing in Reed's court said, noting that "written discovery between the Parties is complete" but that "Party depositions have yet to occur."
Then the letter indicated that a settlement could be on the horizon.
"The parties have participated in multiple mediation sessions. Following those sessions, the Parties have continued to move forward toward settlement and believe a short extension of case deadlines will allow the parties to reach a final resolution," the court filing said.
Law&Crime reached out to Madaio and Boutrous by email for comment.