The Briefing Room
General Category => Editorial/Opinion/Blogs => Topic started by: mystery-ak on July 09, 2020, 02:12:17 pm
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July 9, 2020
“Too Much and Never Enoughâ€: Did Mary Trump Defame The Dead In Her Tell-All Book?
Jonathan Turley
There has been exhaustive coverage over the latest tell-all book targeting President Donald Trump. Mary Trump’s book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,†slams her uncle for a series of horrible acts and a lifetime of deceit. However, one allegation has drawn much attention and raises a related issue repeatedly discussed on this blog: Trump allegedly used a friend as a surrogate to take his college entrance test in order to secure a place at the elite Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. The problem is that this allegation appears to be untrue if the widow of the named individual is telling the truth. That raises the issue of “defaming the dead†and a common law doctrine that I have spent many years criticizing as unfair and harmful.
According to Mary Trump, Trump’s friend Joe Shapiro took the SAT for him:
“Donald worried that his grade point average, which put him far from the top of the class, would scuttle his efforts to get accepted. To hedge his bets he enlisted Joe Shapiro, a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker, to take his SATs for him. That was much easier to pull off in the days before photo IDs and computerized records. Donald, who never lacked for funds, paid his buddy well.â€
The problem with this account is that Shapiro, who died of cancer in 1999, met Trump at the University of Pennsylvania, which (if true) would make it a bit difficult for him to have cheated on the test for him. His widow, former tennis champion Pam Shriver, was outraged by the allegation against her late husband who she said was known as a person of the highest integrity.
more
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/07/09/too-much-and-never-enough-did-mary-trump-defame-the-dead-in-her-tell-all-book/
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Widow of Trump’s friend throws ice water on ‘unfair’ claim in new book: Zero chance he took SAT for Trump
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2020/07/09/widow-of-trumps-friend-throws-ice-water-on-unfair-claim-in-new-book-no-way-he-took-sat-for-trump-944574 (https://www.bizpacreview.com/2020/07/09/widow-of-trumps-friend-throws-ice-water-on-unfair-claim-in-new-book-no-way-he-took-sat-for-trump-944574)
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Turley, being a writer of legal affairs, makes the point that Joe Shapiro's widow can't sue for libel because the Courts hold that the deceased cannot be libeled. She has no standing to sue, but Trump does.
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Orange Man Bad, so facts don't matter.