Donald Trump Demands Money Back After ‘Lipstick on a Pig’ Ghostwriter Speaks Out

Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Mere days after Tony Schwartz, Donald Trump’s Jewish ghostwriter, broke his silence to The New Yorker about his experience writing “The Art of the Deal,” and his assessment of Trump’s character, Trump’s campaign served Schwartz with a cease-and-desist letter.
“The fact that Trump would take time out of convention week to worry about a critic is evidence to me not only of how thin-skinned he is, but also of how misplaced his priorities are,” Schwartz wrote to The New Yorker in an email for a follow-up article.
Jason D. Greenblatt, the general counsel and vice president of the Trump organization, attacks Schwartz for multiple offenses, including using the “Book” to “further your own career,” of rewriting history, and influencing “the public with your defamatory comments.” Greenblatt writes that Trump is the only one responsible for the book’s success and demands Schwartz return the royalties he made since the book’s debut and to retract his critical statements.
Schwartz’s lawyer responded with an equally terse letter stating Schwartz has no intention of returning the royalties or taking back his criticisms.
Both letters are published in The New Yorker follow up article.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
