Trump Family Asks Court to Stop Publication of Tell-All by President's Niece

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

10. An injunction is not the usual remedy for violating an NDA.

These agreements are almost always construed against the person who drafted and demanded it, and they provide for an award of money damages if breached. A nondisclosure agreement is a contract, and the remedy for a breach of contract is damages - either consequential or liquidated (previously agreed-upon) damages - possibly giving back the money from the estate. There might be some exceptions where business trade secrets are involved; a business could write a clause into an NDA where the parties agree that the disclosure of trade secrets would cause irreparable harm and that an injunction would be an agreed-upon remedy if one party was threatening to disclose that kind of information. But where the deal is just the settlement of an estate among family members, there are not likely to be the kind of business trade secrets that need to be protected.

Furthermore, Trump, as president, is a representative of the government, and I'm sure that in seeking to suppress the contents in that book he's acting at least in part in that capacity because he wants to protect his presidency. If so, his petition constitutes a prior restraint in violation of the First Amendment. Prior restraints are almost never allowed - not even in the case of the Pentagon Papers or John Bolton's book. I don't think there are any national security secrets in Mary Trump's book.