- The release of two books offering an inside look at
Donald Trump 'sWhitehouse and family have triggered the president's anger. - The administration has sued former National Security Advisor
John Bolton and threatened to sue his nieceMary Trump , saying that both of them violated non-disclosure agreements by publishing their books. - The use of non-disclosure agreements, threats, and intimidation are age-old practices used by the former celebrity businessman.
Mary L. Trump, the president's 55-year-old niece, has written a book slated for release on July 28 that will give the world an inside look at how her "toxic" family helped shaped the life and rise of President Donald Trump.
The book, titled "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man" has the president reportedly looking into suing his niece — the daughter of Fred Trump Jr. — just as he has done to former National Security Advisor John Bolton. Bolton's book, "The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir," is set to be released on June 23.
The president has claimed that both Bolton violated non-disclosure agreements and has reportedly considered accusing his niece Mary, a former clinical psychologist, of doing the same.
NDAs and other forms of legal and in-person intimidation are a part of Trump's age-old toolkit to muzzle employees, family members, and critics from speaking unfavorably about him or his businesses.
"He was always a no-memos guy, like nothing in writing, even in the 70s when he was just getting going in his dad's office," Gwenda Blair, journalist and author of "The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate," told Business Insider.
His "relationship to secrecy" and resistance to documentation were methods to "completely protect himself against any sorts of disclosures," said Blair, who researched Trump and his family for years.
"When he took over the Trump Organization, everything was verbal," she added. "No memos and 'no paper trail,' which is a way of doing business that's associated with, among other things, organized crime."
Trump uses NDAs to preemptively protect himself
Mary Trump's father, pilot Fred Trump Jr., died in 1981 from complications related to alcoholism.
Mary and her brother, Fred III, thought that one day after their grandfather died, they would inherit their father's share of the family's wealth.
But 18 years later, when the senior Fred Trump died, Donald Trump and his siblings fought to keep most of the money for themselves.
When Mary and her brother took their uncle to court over the matter, Donald Trump responded by taking them off the family's healthcare plan. That was an especially tough blow for Fred Trump III, who had just welcomed a baby boy with serious health issues.
In a December 2000 New York Daily News article, Mary Trump said that the future president and his siblings "should be ashamed of themselves."
The case was settled the next year, and details of the deal were never released.
Sources told The Daily Beast that the settlement included a non-disclosure agreement. That agreement reportedly bars Mary Trump from publishing anything about the litigation and her relationships with Donald Trump, Robert Trump, or Maryanne Trump Barry, who acted as executors of their father's estate.
Donald Trump has a long history of using the non-disclosure agreement to prevent people from speaking negatively about him. They are commonplace among employees at the Trump Organization.
White House employees in his administration have also been asked to sign the documents, which bar them from making "disparaging comments" about Trump and any member of his family, although most legal experts say they're unenforceable.
Stormy Daniels, a former porn star who claimed to have had an affair with Trump in 2006, signed an NDA that came with $130,000 in hush money.
Even individuals who signed up simply to make campaign calls on behalf of Donald Trump during the 2016 season had been required to sign a contract that included a "No Disparagement" clause.
With this in mind, it would be no surprise that the former celebrity businessman would require his own family to sign similar agreements, Blair, and a former Trump Organization employee, told Insider.
Blair said that she was wasn't aware of any NDAs that existed between Trump and his immediate family — including those that work for Trump Organization — but "can assume" they were included in the divorce agreements with his ex-wives.
Trump's first wife, Ivana Trump, worked as the CEO of Trump Castle casino and oversaw the $60 million renovations of Plaza Hotel. She is the mother of Ivanka, Donald Jr., and Eric Trump.
When she got divorced in 1991, after 13 years of marriage and claims of "cruel and inhumane treatment" by her husband, she ended up with $14 million; a 45-room Greenwich, Connecticut, mansion; an apartment in the Trump Plaza; and the use of the 118-room Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida for one month a year, the New York Times reported at the time.
Trump went on to marry former model Marla Maples two years later, three months after she gave birth to Tiffany Trump.
In 1999, Trump let her know about his decision to divorce her by telling the New York Post. After a character assassination in The National Enquirer, which is owned by Trump's friend David Pecker, Maples only ended up with $2 million in the divorce, according to Newsweek.
Around that time, when Trump had floated his ambitions for president, Maples threatened to spill the beans on "what he is really like," Buzzfeed reported.
Trump, at the time, withheld an alimony payment to Maples to "send a message," and claimed that an
"I mean you have a confidentiality agreement; you're not allowed to talk," Trump explained to reporters in 1991. "Why am I paying money to somebody that's violated an agreement?'
Trump is notoriously litigious, and can be ruthless in person
In her research for "The Trumps," Gwenda Blair found several Trump family members that she interviewed to be welcoming, non-threatening, and even pleasant.
Donald Trump, however, was different.
"Whenever I interviewed him, and I did interview him in his office, he taped it," Blair said. "He taped everyone he ever talked to. I mean he would pull out a tape recorder. Did he use it? Did he actually record anything? I can't say."
While writing the book, Blair received several letters from Trump's office, threatening litigation if she printed anything that maligned him.
"I — anyone who wrote about him in any serious way — got a letter on heavy cream stationary with a big gold T embossed on it," she said. "I think I got a couple of those letters, but nothing ever happened. I think that was absolutely his standard M.O."
Trump's litigious history is well documented. By the time Trump entered office, he had been involved in more than 3,000 lawsuits, Blair said.
And the president's intimidation tactics aren't limited to the courtroom. He is infamous for attacking, demeaning, and bullying those critical of his behavior.
Lanny Davis, a friend and former lawyer of Michael Cohen, Trump's own longtime personal lawyer, told Business Insider that Trump is willing to stop at nothing to prevent people from speaking the truth about his behavior.
"First and foremost, Donald Trump, in my experience, doesn't care about what the law is. He doesn't care what the facts are," Davis said. "The truth is always harmful because it's about Donald Trump's behavior."
More recently, Trump has hired attorney Charles Harder to sue media organizations that publish stories he doesn't like, regardless of whether the reports are true.
Davis said that he couldn't comment on Trump's relationship with his niece because he doesn't know the facts, but that he would expect the president to be vicious in his attempt to block the publication of her book, or the one by Bolton.
In 2018, Davis' client Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight charges including campaign finance violations, tax fraud, and bank fraud.
Cohen, a former Trump Organization vice president who was often called Trump's loyal "fixer," said that he had committed the crimes at at Trump's behest. He publicly testified before the House Oversight Committee about his relationship with Trump.
When Trump realized that Cohen was going to speak the truth about his time working for him, the president turned on him and took to Twitter to attack his former lawyer and his family, Davis said.
"He wasn't a member of the family, but he was an attorney for Donald Trump for 10 years," Davis said of Cohen, who is serving the remainder of his prison sentence at home.
Davis said that he has learned how little loyalty Trump has for those who work for him, and others who disagree with his actions.
Members of Trump's own family have been subjected to his wrath of insults and bullying, even while other people were in the room, Davis said.
"When someone is about to tell the truth, Donald Trump knows no boundaries," Davis said. "He unleashes everything he has."
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- Trump in new interview admits 'regret' over how he treated his late brother Fred Trump Jr., who struggled with alcoholism
- Trump says his father was 'born in a very wonderful place in Germany' — but Fred Trump was actually born in New York City