Maryanne Trump Barry, a former federal judge and older sister of Donald Trump, has died at her home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He was 86 years old. One of her family members said they found her lifeless in the early hours of this morning, The New York Times reports. The cause of death was not specified.
Maryanne was her brother Donald’s lifelong protector and critic. A woman of law, she served as a federal judge in New Jersey, a position she attained during Ronald Reagan’s presidency with the help of Trump’s fixer, attorney Roy M. Cohn. She retired in 2019 as investigations mounted following a New York Times investigation into the family’s tax practices. According to some confidants, few people listened to Trump as much as he listened to his sister. However, in the last year of his presidency, their relationship had deteriorated somewhat: They examined the tone in which Maryanne was critical of the president and published by their mutual niece, Mary L. Trump, who was promoting a memoir about their family.
The 77-year-old Donald, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and facing dozens of criminal charges in four court cases, has suffered a series of personal losses in recent years. His younger brother Robert S. Trump died in 2020: the then president held a memorial service for him in the White House. His first wife, Ivana Trump, died in 2022.