It looks like Mary L. Trump may have a quiet weekend. New York State Supreme Court judge Hal B. Greenwald on Friday delayed a scheduled appearance by the parties in Trump's ongoing case until Monday, July 13, and extended the temporary restraining order barring the author from publishing or talking about her explosive tell-all Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man until then.
Publisher Simon & Schuster remains free to move ahead with its plans to publish the book, however, after an appeals court on July 1 vacated the temporary restraining order against them. The book is now set to publish the day after the newly scheduled hearing, on July 14, after S&S moved up its pub date from July 28, citing "high demand and extraordinary interest." As PW first reported on Monday, S&S now has some 600,000 copies of the book in print.
Though there is clearly no stopping the book from being published at this point, the Temporary Restraining Order on the author functions as something of a gag order, keeping the author from speaking and promoting the book. With the motion now fully briefed, it's also unclear whether there will actually be a hearing, or whether Greenwald will rule on the submissions. In his June 30 order to show cause, which set a July 10 appearance date, Greenwald noted that "no appearances shall be required on the return date and a decision will be rendered based on the papers submitted." The current order calling for a July 13 hearing does not set a time.
Meanwhile, despite the book being widely available, Trump family attorneys are still demanding an injunction restraining both the author and the publisher from publishing the book, calling the case "a mere contract dispute." Lawyers for Mary L. Trump, meanwhile, pressed the court to immediately abandon the Temporary Restraining Order in a July 6 letter to the court, noting that S&S's publication cannot be stopped.
