Maryanne Trump Barry, former President Donald Trump’s older sister and a former federal judge, has died at 86, the former president's son confirmed.
"As I pulled up here this morning, I found out my aunt passed away," Donald Trump Jr. told reporters outside a courthouse in Manhattan where he was testifying in his father's civil fraud trial.
"I'm very close with her grandson, we hang out all the time, and so it's obviously a rough day for that, but unfortunately it is what it is," he said.
Mrs Barry served as a federal judge in New Jersey from 1983 until her retirement in 2019. She was appointed in 1983 by then-US president Ronald Reagan to be a judge in New Jersey's US district court. Later, in 1999, President Bill Clinton appointed her to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She retired in 2019 as she faced a misconduct inquiry over reports she participated in a scheme to avoid taxes.
She married twice, first to David Desmond, with whom she had one son, and then to John Joseph Barry, who died in 2000.
Mrs Barry was close to Donald Trump for decades and was one of the few people whose advice he sought. However in 2020, the last year of Trump's term in the White House, his niece Mary Trump released recordings of Mrs Barry speaking critically about the then-president. She described the US president as cruel and a liar whose lack of principles meant he could not be trusted.
"Donald's out for Donald," she said in the recordings. ''His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God.''
''I'm talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. He has no principles. None. None.''
The former president and his sister were on better terms recently. They saw each other over the summer at Trump's Bedminster, New Jersey club.
Post a commentNotably, she is the third of Mr. Trump's four siblings to have passed away. As per ABC News, Robert Trump, his youngest brother, died in August 2020 at 71 years old. Fred Trump Jr. died of a heart attack at just 42 years old in September 1981. His only surviving sister, Elizabeth Trump Grau, 81, is a former banker.
