Maryanne Trump Barry, former President Donald Trump’s oldest sister, died on Monday at 86 years old.
A former federal judge, Barry, was found in her Upper East Side apartment in New York Monday morning. According to ABC News, “There were no signs of trauma or foul play. Emergency crews responded to a call of a person in cardiac arrest.”
Barry was the third of Donald Trump’s four siblings to die, leaving him and his younger sister, Elizabeth Trump Grau, as the only surviving siblings.
“As I pulled up here this morning, I found out my aunt passed away,” Donald Trump Jr. told reporters Monday morning, per Reuters.
“I’m very close with her grandson, we hang out all the time, and so it’s obviously a rough day for that, but unfortunately it is what it is,” he added.
The New York Times said former President Trump respected few people’s opinions as much as his eldest sister’s. However, in recent years, their relationship went through challenges following the release of their niece Mary L. Trump’s memoir about their family in which she “released recordings of her aunt speaking harshly about the president.”
In the recordings shared by The Washington Post, Barry is heard saying all the former president wants to do “is appeal to his base. He has no principles. None.”
In 2019, Barry retired from her career following a New York Times investigation about the Trump family’s involvement in questionable tax strategies in the 1990s aimed at boosting the wealth they inherited.
After her retirement, the case was closed.
Sources told ABC News that Barry and Trump had tried to make amends and even “saw each other as recently as this summer at Trump’s club in Bedminster, New Jersey.”
The death of his sister comes at a time when Donald Trump, 77, is facing criminal charges in four cases and is the current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.