Maryanne Trump Barry, ex-president’s sister, former federal judge, dies at 86
NEW YORK — Maryanne Trump Barry, the ex-president’s sister and a retired federal judge, was found dead in her Manhattan apartment Monday. She was 86.
Barry’s body was discovered about 4 a.m., sources told ABC News. There were no signs of trauma or foul play, but no cause was immediately released.
Barry was a senior judge on the 3rd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals until she retired in 2019 amid controversy over alleged fraudulent tax and financial transactions made by Trump family patriarch Fred Trump Sr. and her siblings.
She was appointed to New Jersey Federal Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1983 and was then appointed to the Court of Appeals in 1999 by President Bill Clinton.
The investigation into potential wrongdoing by Barry and the Trump family was closed without a conclusion when Barry retired in February 2019. She had gone into semiretirement after her brother won the White House in 2016.
Former President Donald Trump did not immediately comment on his older sister’s death.
He did post statements on his social media site deriding special counsel Jack Smith and other critics and suggesting they should be sent to mental institutions if he wins a second term.
Barry was respected by the former president, friends said, and he openly mused about appointing her to the Supreme Court.
But the siblings had a falling-out over the release of a critical tell-all book by Mary Trump, a niece of Barry and Donald Trump.
Mary Trump released tapes of her aunt deriding her presidential brother as a liar and a dangerous leader.
“It’s the phoniness of it all,” Barry told her niece on the tapes. “It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel.”
“He has no principles. None,” she added.
Donald Trump, 77, has now lost three of his four siblings, with the reclusive Elizabeth Trump Grau, 81, the only surviving one.
Fred Trump Jr. died of a heart attack at just 42 years old in September 1981. Robert Trump, the youngest of the five siblings, died in 2020 at 71.
Donald Trump’s ex-wife Ivana, the mother of three of his grown children, died last year.
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