The publisher Simon & Schuster has told a New York judge that it was unaware of the confidentiality agreement President Trump’s brother says their niece, Mary L. Trump, signed with their family but said it should not prevent Ms. Trump’s tell-all book from being published.
“Mr. Trump believes that simply because he alleges that Ms. Trump violated a nondisclosure agreement, one that Simon & Schuster did not know about and was not a party to, he may force Simon & Schuster to stop the presses and throw the brakes on the delivery trucks, halting publication of the book,” the publisher said in a court filing on Tuesday. “Such an outcome would be unprecedented in this country.”
The filing was in response to a ruling by Judge Hal Greenwald of the New York State Supreme Court in Dutchess County, who on Tuesday issued a temporary restraining order barring publication of the book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” until a hearing on July 10.
The president told reporters recently that his niece had a confidentiality agreement after a court settlement over his father’s estate, and his brother, Robert S. Trump, asked Judge Greenwald to stop publication of the book because he said Ms. Trump was in breach of it.
The Simon & Schuster filing went on to note that “Too Much and Never Enough” was already a best seller on Amazon and said it “addresses issues of profound importance to our country, with critical insights concerning the president of the United States, his formative years and his family’s financial dealings.”
“Ms. Trump offers a personal perspective on President Trump — valuable eyewitness source material for historians and citizens,” the filing said. “This court should reject plaintiff’s efforts to silence it.”
It also referred to the fact that an effort by the White House to block publication of a book by John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, was rejected, despite the judge’s finding that Mr. Bolton had most likely disclosed classified information and violated his nondisclosure agreement with the government.
In a separate affidavit, Jonathan Karp, Simon & Schuster’s chief executive, said that tens of thousands of copies of the book had already been printed. Its official publication date is July 28.
Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a lawyer for Ms. Trump, said on Wednesday that he planned to file an appeal of Judge Greenwald’s ruling. “As we will demonstrate when we file our brief for Ms. Trump, this 20-year-old agreement is inapplicable, void and unenforceable,” he said in a statement.
A group of free speech advocates, including the Association of American Publishers and the PEN American Center, have filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that stopping the publication of Ms. Trump’s book would be a clear violation of the First Amendment.
“Imbuing an almost 20-year-old, exceedingly vague contractual provision with the power to block the publication of a book,” they wrote, “would constrain public discourse to an extreme and unacceptable degree.”
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