Charles HarderIn a letter to Dutchess County Supreme Court Justice Hal Greenwald late Friday, an attorney representing Robert Trump, President Donald Trump’s brother, pointed to the circumstances surrounding former national security adviser John Bolton’s book to argue for a temporary restraining order blocking the release of Trump niece Mary Trump’s upcoming book.
Attorney Charles Harder wrote that, while Mary Trump’s book “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” is set for publication July 28, publishing lead times mean that bookstores and reviewers could receive copies “any day now.”
“Plaintiff is seeking to avoid the situation presented in the recent case of United States v. Bolton … where the Court held that even though the government had established that Mr. Bolton violated his contractual obligations in publishing his book, no injunction could issue because while the book had not yet been released, it had been distributed and numerous people had access to copies of the book,” Harder wrote.
Bolton was sued by the attorneys in the civil division of the U.S. Department of Justice, who argued that his book contained classified information and compromised national security. In a hearing on the government’s request for an emergency order blocking publication days before the book’s planned release, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth of the District of Columbia found that the proverbial horse was “out of the barn” because review copies had been widely distributed.
Harder noted in his letter that Simon & Schuster is the publisher of both Bolton’s book and Mary Trump’s. On behalf of Robert Trump, Harder has argued that Mary Trump’s book will violate a confidentiality provision of the settlement agreement associated with her grandfather Fred Trump’s will.
In her own letter to Greenwald on Friday, Mary Trump’s attorney, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partner Anne Champion, asked for the opportunity to file a brief opposing Robert Trump’s TRO application. She noted that the book’s planned release was more than a month away.
Both Champion and Simon & Schuster’s attorney Elizabeth McNamara of Davis Wright Tremaine argued in letters that the TRO application represented an infringement on Mary Trump’s First Amendment rights.
“The First Amendment unquestionably protects Ms. Trump’s right to participate in the electoral debate by writing and having published her work concerning the President’s character and fitness for office, and it independently protects the right of Defendant Simon & Schuster, Inc., to publish it as well,” Champion wrote.
McNamara described the TRO application as an attempt at prior restraint, and she argued that, despite Harder’s arguments to the contrary, restraining orders disturb the status quo in a First Amendment context.
Harder disputed the First Amendment arguments in a statement Saturday.
“The enforcement of voluntary contracts is a pillar of our legal system,” he said. “This private dispute has nothing to do with the First Amendment.”
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