Trump biographer slams ‘chickensh*t’ publisher who won’t reissue Ivana’s rape claims
Ivana Trump departs the 10th Annual Angel Ball 2007 that helps raise money for the G&P Foundation for Cancer Research (Christopher Peterson/Wikimedia Commons)

You can't buy the book, but you can get the Kindle version on Amazon.com. Harry Hurt III, the author of Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, was told by his publisher that the book is far too dangerous to reprint because the presumptive GOP nominee will likely move forward with litigation this time around. So, he published it on Amazon himself.


When the book was being published, 23 years ago, Trump and his attorney demanded a meeting with W.W. Norton, Hurt's publisher, according to the "Daily Beast". They wanted to review the portion of the book taken from Trump’s divorce records where Ivana Trump alleged she was raped by her husband.

“They got angrier and angrier," Hurt told the Daily Beast. "Donald jumped up and pulled a tape recorder out of the pocket of his suit, and declared, 'I’ve got all this on tape,’” Hurt said Trump's lawyer went pale. The publisher's lawyer responded, “'Oh, you’ve been taping the whole time, and didn’t tell us? That’s not right.’”

Hurt had hoped given Trump's popularity that his publisher might reprint the book, but the in-house counsel said that it was a no-go.

“[The editor] informed me that Norton’s current in-house lawyer, whose name I do not know, had deemed the book too ‘dangerous’ to reissue,” Hurt told The Daily Beast. “It’s chickenshit, since the book has been out for 23 years, and no one has even threatened to sue me... So that’s kind of bullshit.”

As Trump has ascended to the throne of the GOP nomination, the price of Hurt's book has also gone up. Searches on Amazon show copies available for anywhere between $251 to $645. But, Hurt got the publishing rights and has done a quick publish for Amazon's Kindle for $9.99. He's currently shopping it around to other publishers who aren't afraid of Trump's litigation-loving ways.