Government

Shorter Donald Trump Suit: 'They Stole Confidential Papers That Are Also Totally False, Or Something'

Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor... not that this is a concept he grasps.

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(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Forty-Fifth President of the United StatesTM Donald Trump just filed a lawsuit against his niece, Mary Trump, the New York Times, a bunch of reporters, and a string of John Does and ABC Corporations seeking $100M for “an insidious plot to obtain confidential and highly-sensitive records which they exploited for their own benefit and utilized as a means of falsely legitimizing their publicized works.”

What does “falsely legitimizing” mean? That’s the literal $100M question since if the documents were “confidential and highly-sensitive,” they’re presumably true. If he was damaged by their release, they’re presumably true. If they ended up confirming what appears to be tax fraud they are… not false… but “falsely legitimizing”? I guess!

The Dutchess County suit cobbles together claims of a breached confidentiality agreement and a bar exam refresher of a “breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing” against Mary Trump. Unjust enrichment claims against everyone. Tortious interference claims against the Times — as well as aiding and abetting tortious interference for some reason — and negligent supervision claims against the Times. Cutting through all of it, what’s the deal with this complaint?

Hoping that it pushes the Federalist Society’s “How to Coup” Eastman memo off the front pages.

Yep, that’s pretty much all this is. Cynical timing aside, Trump actually has some potentially valid claims here. And yet the crux of the suit is “they used private, horribly damaging documents against me that… also must not be true, or else I’m admitting to tax fraud?” Check out the galaxy brain on Donnie!

Yes, the tax documents that Mary Trump leaked to the Times were covered by some kind of confidentiality agreement, so there’s some kind of breach. Anyone familiar with a confidentiality agreement would expect some sort of liquidated damages provision to hold sway here. So if you’re curious how a breach of this agreement could possibly reach $100M in damages, rest assured that there was no liquidated damages provision, but rather:

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The Settlement Agreement further states that Proponents “will not have an adequate remedy at law in the event of any breach” of the confidentiality obligations of Paragraph 2 and that Proponents will “suffer irreparable damage and injury in the event of any such brief.”

I assume they mean “breach.” Honestly, typos are the least of the issues in this complaint.

For those following along at home, what this means is that the Trump lawyers behind the original settlement agreement attempted to create an infinite damages clause for any breach. This is creative! It’s also nonsense. Have courts previously laughed off such clauses as proof that the agreement itself lacked sufficient clarity to be enforceable? They have! And not just in the abstract, the courts reached this conclusion over this specific agreement.

In a 2020 opinion in Robert Trump’s sock puppet suit against Mary trying to prior restrain her book launch:

According to the above reading, the case is slam dunk. But it is not. Too many words, with too many meanings. The cost of the litigation that was settled should have been finalized with more specifics, more clarity, if the current situation was even comprehended, at the time the Agreement was signed.

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The moral of the story is you can’t create binding agreements so vague as to turn around and claim $100M damages for confidentiality breaches.

But it does bring us back to the strategic muddle of this whole complaint — the prior suit was brought by Robert Trump specifically to avoid forcing Donald to admit that the leaked documents accurately described tax shenanigans. Because Donald Trump isn’t “damaged” by any of these leaks unless the documents are accurate. Even if he wants to claim that the top-line documents acquired by the Times were misconstrued, he would need to unseal even more records to establish the proper context, which one assumes he’s unwilling to do based on… everything he’s ever done with regard to his tax papers.

Meanwhile… let’s get back to this John Eastman thing!

Earlier: Donald Trump Tries To Postpone Irrelevancy The Only Way He Knows How: By Filing A Doomed Lawsuit

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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