Donald Trump’s lawsuit against his niece, Mary Trump, has faced significant delays due to a contentious discovery dispute. Mary Trump claims this dispute is crucial to an active affirmative defense. In response, the former president is urging a New York appellate court to resolve this matter swiftly so that the case can advance to trial.

Recently, Trump submitted a request to the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division, First Department, to dismiss his niece’s appeal entirely. Trump’s legal team argues that Mary Trump’s attempts have been repeatedly denied, tracing back to her unsuccessful lawsuit from years prior.

In the legal brief, which consistently refers to Mary Trump as Dr. Trump, it is argued there’s no justification to alter the course of action and allow her access to the Trump family’s “Estate Valuation Materials” during discovery. Mary Trump, the daughter of Fred Trump Jr., contends that these documents are vital to demonstrating that she was misled about the true value of her inheritance. She claims she was fraudulently persuaded into a 2001 family settlement following Fred Trump Sr.’s passing, thus rendering the settlement’s confidentiality provision unenforceable and voidable.

Donald Trump’s legal team, led by attorney Michael Madaio, maintains a lawsuit that accuses Mary Trump, along with The New York Times and its reporters, of conspiring against him. They allege an “insidious plot” to reveal his confidential tax information and to accuse him of “outright fraud.” This accusation is linked to a Pulitzer Prize-winning story titled, “Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father,” which scrutinized Trump’s financial dealings.

The president’s legal team, headed up by attorney Michael Madaio, has alleged in a still-active lawsuit that Mary Trump, the New York Times, and Times reporters “maliciously conspir[ed] against him” in an “insidious plot” to expose his confidential tax records and accuse him of “outright fraud” in the Pulitzer Prize-winning story headlined, “Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father.”

Separately, Trump alleged, the defendant niece “disclos[ed] confidential information in a tell-all novel” — “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man” — and “breached her confidentiality obligations[.]”

In August, New York Supreme Court Justice Robert Reed, the same judge who tossed out Mary Trump’s lawsuit in 2022, again rebuffed her efforts to compel discovery of the “Estate Valuation Materials.”

In 2022, Reed found, upon reading the “releases and settlement agreement together,” that the documents “clearly and unambiguously released” the president “from unknown claims, including fraud claims.”

Last May, Reed ruled that Mary Trump could not rely on her failed arguments to build her “fraud defense” and fend off the president’s complaint. The defendant not only appealed but also sought leave from Reed to reargue the point. Come August, Reed denied the defendant that leave.

In October, Mary Trump’s lawyers told the appellate court that Reed’s denials could not be “left undisturbed,” as that would “result in significant prejudice to Dr. Trump who, for all practical purposes, is now unable to effectively pursue one of her live affirmative defenses.”

Madaio has now countered that Reed was plainly in the right.

“Justice Reed correctly declined to compel production since Dr. Trump’s request was based on a flawed legal theory that had been expressly waived by contract, rejected in a prior litigation, and affirmed on appeal,” the appellate brief said. “In any event, Dr. Trump’s efforts to repackage her previously-dismissed fraud theory as an affirmative defense fails as a matter of law.”

“The Trial Court providently exercised its broad discretion in denying Dr. Trump’s motion to compel because the Estate Valuation Materials were sought solely to support a fraudulent inducement theory that was previously denied, in a prior action, on several different grounds,” the brief went on. “Thus, the Trial Court properly declined to compel discovery that was not material or necessary to any viable claim or defense and that would have served only to relitigate issues already finally resolved.”

As of Wednesday, oral argument appears to be on track for sometime in February.

At the lower court level last week, Reed additionally set other deadlines, making Aug. 3 the target date for confirming that discovery is complete and the case fit for the trial calendar.

The order stated that the parties agreed to finish depositions by April 9, to conclude “expert discovery” and “all disclosures” by June 18, and to finally file a “Note of Issue” by Aug. 3.