Mary Trump helped uncover the biggest Trump scandal you've already forgotten about, Rachel Maddow notes

Rachel Maddow on Mary Trump&#039;s tell-all

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/MSNBC)

last updated 8 July 2020

In Mary Trump's forthcoming book on her famous family, Too Much and Never Enough, she describes her involvement in helping The New York Times obtain tax documents uncovering decades of financial malfeasance and tax dodging by President Trump, his company, and his siblings.

That "has always struck me as one of the great overlooked jaw-droppers of the scandal-ridden Trump era," Rachel Maddow said on MSNBC Tuesday night. "His older sister, federal Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, really did have to give up her lifetime seat on the federal bench in order to avoid a judicial ethics inquiry into a massive, multi-million-dollar alleged years-long tax fraud scheme that she reportedly engaged in with her family, including with her brother, who is the sitting president. I mean, we don't even think of that as one of the Trump scandals, but, like, that's bigger than any other presidential scandal of my lifetime." Trump Barry denied any willing part in the scheme, Mary Trump writes in her book.

Mary Trump also says her Aunt Maryanne called Donald Trump "a clown" in 2015 and expressed astonishment evangelicals Christians would support her brother, saying, "The only time Donald went to church was when the cameras were there. ... He has no principles. None," CNN's Erin Burnett reported. Trump biographer David Kay Johnston explained why Trump paying someone else to take his SATs is so plausible.

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Vanity Fair's Emily Jane Fox told MSNBC's Brian Williams she thinks Trump will be most upset by his niece's clinical analysis of Trump's relationship with his father, Fred Trump, though overall the book "hits at the specific fleshy part of Trump: the part that is very concerned with the branding of the Trump family and the myth-making surrounding them" and the part that "hates leakers and people who are disloyal to him." Each of those "really irks this president," she said. "Combining the two of them feels potentially explosive to him as he heads into an election year."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.