Donald Trump paid a friend to sit his SAT exams, his niece has claimed in a scathing tell-all memoir.
Mary L Trump, a psychologist, wrote that the US president paid “Joe Shapiro, a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker” to take the exams, which are used for university admissions, to help him get into Fordham University in New York.
He later transferred to the prestigious Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied economics.
Ms Trump, who is the daughter of the president’s late brother Fred Jr, added: “Donald, who never lacked for funds, paid his buddy well.”
Donald Trump has been accused of paying a friend to take his SAT exams
White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews said the claim was “completely false”.
Ms Trump’s book, named Too Much and Never Enough, How My Family Created The World’s Most Dangerous Man, also includes details about the president’s childhood.
In one section, she describes how Mr Trump used to hide his favourite toys from Fred Jr and harboured resentment over childhood jokes, such as Fred Jr dumping a bowl of mashed potatoes on him when he was seven.
She said Mr Trump’s crude rhetoric on the campaign trail was nothing new, as it reminded her “of every family meal I’d ever attended during which Donald had talked about all of the women he considered ugly fat slobs or the men, usually more accomplished or powerful, he called losers.”
The memoir contains lengthy psychoanalysis of the Trump family, with Ms Trump blaming Mr Trump’s behaviour on treatment from his father Fred.
Kayleigh McEnany said the book contains ‘absurd accusations that have absolutely no bearing in truth’
She wrote: “Lying was defensive – not simply a way to circumvent his father’s disapproval or to avoid punishment… but a way to survive.”
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany hit back at the book, saying: “It’s ridiculous, absurd accusations that have absolutely no bearing in truth.”
Publisher Simon & Schuster said it would be releasing the book two weeks early, on 14 July, after a New York appellate court cleared the way for its publication following a legal challenge.
Robert Trump, the president’s younger brother, sued Ms Trump, arguing in legal papers that she was subject to a 20-year-old agreement between family members that no one would publish accounts involving core family members without their approval.
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A judge last week left in place an order that blocked Ms Trump and any agent of hers from distributing the book, but Simon & Schuster are not covered by the ruling.
It is the second insider account in two months to paint a deeply unflattering portrait of the president, following the release of former national security adviser John Bolton’s bestseller, The Room Where It Happened.