Trump sued by niece Mary alleging family defrauded her

[WASHINGTON] President Donald Trump was sued by his niece Mary for allegedly conspiring with his brother and sister to defraud her of tens of millions of dollars by using falsified documents to undervalue her share in the family business.

The suit filed Thursday by Ms Mary Trump comes months after the publication of her damning tell-all book about the family. Ms Mary Trump's suit, which focuses on the settlement of disputed wills, brings to light more potentially damaging allegations less than six weeks before the presidential election.

She alleges that Mr Donald Trump, along with Mr Robert Trump and their sister Maryanne, failed to follow through on a pledge to "watch over her interests as fiduciaries" after she inherited minority interests in the family business following the death of her father Fred Trump, the president's older brother, according to the complaint.

"They lied," Ms Mary Trump said in the complaint. "Rather than protect Mary's interests, they designed and carried out a complex scheme to siphon funds away from her interests, conceal their grift, and deceive her about the true value of what she had inherited." The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The suit also alleges that when Mr Donald Trump's father, Fred, died in 1999, Mr Trump and his siblings tried to "squeeze Mary out altogether." Ms Mary Trump claims her aunt and uncles threatened to bankrupt her interests and cut her off from the health insurance she claims was keeping her infant nephew with cerebral palsy alive.

Crucially, Ms Mary Trump claims, the president and his siblings gave her fraudulent valuations as part of a 2001 settlement agreement over the wills and "forced her to sign," the suit says. The family members all signed a confidentiality agreement as part of the settlement.

Mr Robert Trump, who died in August, sued Ms Mary Trump in a failed effort to block the publication of her tell-all memoir, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man. She claims in the book that when she agreed to the settlement she was told the family estate was worth US$30 million, while paperwork she unearthed years later show it was worth closer to US$1 billion.

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