Donald Trump’s lawsuit against his niece, Mary Trump, has hit a legal snag due to a protracted discovery dispute. Mary Trump argues that the contested information is crucial for her active defense. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is appealing to a New York appellate court to resolve this issue, allowing the case to move forward towards trial.

Recently, Trump urged the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division, First Department, to dismiss Mary Trump’s appeal completely. His legal team contends that her arguments have been consistently rejected, dating back to her unsuccessful lawsuit from years prior.

In their legal brief, which consistently refers to her as Dr. Trump, Trump’s lawyers assert there is no justification for reversing the decision that blocks her access to the Trump family’s “Estate Valuation Materials.” Mary Trump claims these documents are essential to demonstrate that she was deceived about the “true value” of her inheritance. She alleges this deception led her into a 2001 family settlement following Fred Trump Sr.’s death, which she argues renders the settlement’s “confidentiality provision” unenforceable and voidable.

Trump’s legal team, with attorney Michael Madaio at the helm, has maintained in an ongoing lawsuit that Mary Trump, along with the New York Times and its reporters, engaged in a “malicious” conspiracy to reveal Trump’s confidential tax information. This accusation stems from the Pulitzer Prize-winning exposé titled “Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father.”

Additionally, Trump accuses his niece of breaching confidentiality by disclosing private information in her book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.” He claims that by doing so, she violated her confidentiality obligations.

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.