Tycoon Donald Trump with his sister Maryanne Trump Barry, at a press conference after visiting the house in Tonga, in the Isle of Lewis, where his mother was raised before emigrating to the United States.
Andrew Milligan | Pictures Pa | Getty Images
Maryanne Trump Barry, a federal appeals judge and the older sister of former President Donald Trump, has died at the age of 86.
Barry was pronounced dead at his Fifth Avenue apartment in Manhattan by medical personnel who were called to the scene after 4 a.m. ET Monday, a spokesperson for the New York Police Department told CNBC. There was no sign of trauma or foul play.
Barry was nominated to the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 1999 by then President Bill Clinton. She largely avoided the attention her brother had always been in, first as a television host and business personality and then as the president of the United States.
She spent two decades on the Philadelphia-based appeals court before resigning amid a civil misconduct investigation related to her family’s alleged tax avoidance schemes.
His resignation in 2019 ended that investigation, which was based on whether Barry violated rules of legal conduct by participating in the schemes reported in the explosive New York Times investigation.
In 2020, Maryanne’s niece, Mary Trump, revealed that she had secretly recorded audio of Barry criticizing her brother Donald for his “lies” and “cruelty” as president.
In those recordings, which were given to the Washington Post, Barry described how Donald helped to nominate her to federal judges by having his lawyer Roy Cohn send calls to the Reagan administration.
It was “the only favor I’ve ever asked in my entire life,” Barry said in those recordings.
But she also tore into her brother, saying to Muire, “He has no principles.
A spokesman for the former president, 77, did not respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
Maryanne’s only surviving siblings are Donald Trump, who is running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and middle sister Elizabeth Trump Grau.
Fred Trump Jr., died at the age of 42 in 1981 of complications from alcoholism. Robert Trump, Donald’s younger brother, died in 2020 at the age of 71.
