The man Trump is accused of paying to take his SAT exam died in 1999, but his widow denied that he would have helped cheat the system

• In her new book, Mary Trump, President Donald Trump's niece, says her uncle cheated his way into the Wharton School by paying a friend, Joe Shapiro, to take his SAT for him.
• Shapiro's widow, the tennis legend Pam Shriver, called that claim into question in a recorded statement released on Wednesday.
• While she did not refute the claim, Shriver said she was always told that her husband met Donald Trump after Trump started at Wharton.
• Shriver also said Shapiro was "a man of great integrity" and "honesty."

In her new book, Mary Trump, President Donald Trump's niece, accused him of cheating his way into the prestigious Wharton School by paying a "close friend" named Joe Shapiro to take his SAT for him.

But the widow of a man with the same name who was friends with Donald Trump called that claim into question on Wednesday.

The tennis legend Pam Shriver said that her first husband, who died in 1999, was a college friend of Trump's and that they kept in touch over the years.

—Pam Shriver (@PHShriver) July 8, 2020

While Shriver did not refute Mary Trump's account, she said she was always told that her husband met Donald Trump after Trump had already started at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Both Shapiro and Trump graduated in 1968.

Shriver also described her first husband as "a man of great integrity" and "honesty."

"Obviously Joe's not here to defend himself and to state what happened, but I just want to recollect what he told me about where he met Mr. Trump," Shriver said in a recorded statement posted on Twitter.

Shriver said she spoke out after talking with Shapiro's close friends and his sister about the incident.

It's still possible that Mary Trump was referring to another friend named Joe Shapiro, or that Shriver's husband had met Trump before Wharton, took his exam for him, and never told anyone about it.

Simon & Schuster, the publisher of Mary Trump's book, did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Shriver, who won four Grand Slam tournaments as a doubles player and made it to the 1978 US Open finals as a singles player, later married and had three children with her second husband, the "James Bond" actor George Lazenby. They divorced in 2008. Shriver is now a tennis commentator for ESPN.

Mary Trump's book, "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man," is set to be released on Tuesday.

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