Trump is Getting A Divorce

16 Mar, 2018

Donald Trump Jr., President Trump’s eldest child and the father of five himself, is being sued for divorce by his wife Vanessa.

Vanessa Trump, 40, a former model and actress who married Trump Jr. in 2005, filed late Thursday in New York for an uncontested divorce, according to the court docket. Uncontested means there likely won’t be a fight over custody or assets, according to the reports.

The New York Post was first to report the news. The Post‘s Page Six gossip column also reported Wednesday the two were struggling with marital problems due to Trump Jr.’s heavy travel schedule and his controversial tweets, mostly related to defending his father from all criticism.

They are the parents of five of President Trump’s grandchildren; theirs range in age from 3 to 10.

Trump Jr., 40, was drawn into the Trump administration’s ongoing problems with a sprawling investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election after he admitted to meeting a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower to discuss  his father’s 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton.

In September, Trump Jr. talked about the meeting to the Senate Judiciary Committee staff investigating Russian interference. “I did not collude with any foreign government and do not know of anyone who did,” Trump Jr. said, according to Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., a member of the committee.

This week, The New York Times reported special counsel Robert Mueller has subpoenaed the Trump Organization, which Trump Jr. helps run, to turn over documents, including some related to Russia, in the first known instance of the special counsel demanding records directly related to President Trump’s businesses.

Also this week, Trump Jr., followed his father in stumping for a Republican candidate in a congressional special election in Pennsylvania, hoping to stave off defeat for state Rep. Rick Saccone at the hands of Democrat Conor Lamb. Lamb won anyway.

It’s not clear what effect if any a divorce might have on Trump Jr.’s involvement in the Russia investigation if Vanessa Trump is no longer covered by spousal privilege, according to Joshua Forman, a celebrity divorce attorney and partner at Chemtob, Moss & Forman in New York.

“In theory, Vanessa could talk about what Donald Trump Jr. knew about the Russia investigation if spousal privilege doesn’t apply, but that would take the divorce into a dark place,” Forman says. “However, she may have signed a prenuptial agreement with a confidentiality clause and would thus be precluded from speaking during or after marriage.

“If there isn’t a confidentiality clause and there isn’t a prenup in place, then once the divorce is complete, she could, if allowable by the law in the jurisdiction she is called to testify in, be compelled to testify.”

However, notes Neena Tankha, a celebrity divorce lawyer and partner at Warshaw Burstein LLP in New York, Vanessa Trump “could still refuse to answer questions about their private communications during the marriage under the marital communications privilege, which survives the marriage.”

She may request, as part of the divorce settlement, a clause saying she can maintain those marital communications as private after the divorce, Tankha added.

Trump Jr. and his brother, Eric Trump, have been running the Trump Organization since their father became president in 2017 and their sister Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, joined the White House staff in Washington.

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