Trump's Judge Sister Retires, Conveniently Ending Probe Into Family's Tax Schemes

For as much as President Donald Trump loves to rail against the judicial branch, he conspicuously neglects to mention that his own sister, 82 year old Maryanne Trump Barry, is a federal Judge. At least, she was until recently, when she retired from the bench, conveniently ending an inquiry into whether she was a part of her family’s long-standing series of alleged tax crimes first reported by the New York Times.

As the Times reported on Thursday, Barry had spent the past two years in a state of semi-retirement as an “inactive” third circuit federal appellate judge, but made it official in February. Her retirement came just ten days after a group of complainants were notified that their request to investigate which members of the Trump family may have benefitted from his long history of tax schemes would be “receiving the full attention” of a judicial conduct council.

By retiring, however, Barry is no longer subject to judicial conduct rules, and the Times reports that the complainants—two of whom spoke with the paper—were notified this week that the probe was dropped without reaching any conclusions.

While the Times’ initial investigation into the Trump family’s tax shenanigans did not directly implicate Barry, it did find the president’s elder sister was involved in an intra-family struggle to ensure wealth accumulated from patriarch Fred Trump’s real estate business would be passed on to his children. Specifically:

Judge Barry had been a co-owner of a shell company — All County Building Supply & Maintenance — created by the family to siphon cash from their father’s empire by marking up purchases already made by his employees, The Times investigation found. Judge Barry, her siblings and a cousin split the markup, free of gift and estate taxes, which at the time were levied at a much higher rate than income taxes.

Now that she’s officially retired, Trump Barry is reportedly entitled to a comfortable retirement package between $184,500 and $217,600 a year, per the paper. And she’s not subject to the probing eyes of investigators anymore—which is more than the rest of the family can say.