What we know about reports that Trump evicted 74-year-old stroke victim in the '80s

For years, rumors have circulated online about a purported news article that claimed U.S. President Donald Trump evicted a 74-year-old stroke victim in the 1980s, when he was a New York landlord.

A picture of the news article has circulated on Facebook, Reddit and Instagram.

"Trump Evicts Stroke Victim, 74," the article's headline read. The clipping also featured two images, one of an elderly woman in bed and one of Trump.

The images showed a legitimate news article originally published on May 5, 1980, by the Village Voice, a liberal, alternative newsweekly publication based in New York City and, at the time, owned by conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch. (Murdoch is best known as the former chairman of Fox Corp. and News Corp.) 

The article did indeed state that the Trump Organization, one of the largest landlords in New York City at the time, evicted 74-year-old Mary Filan, who had suffered a "recent" stroke. Trump ran the Trump Organization (formerly Elizabeth Trump & Son) from 1971 until early 2017, just before he was sworn in as U.S. president for his first term.

Although the article was real, it was not possible to independently verify its details, as Joe Conason, the reporter behind the story, said he no longer has the relevant files and notes given how old the article is — for instance, although Filan's name is common enough that we were unable to definitively identify any obituaries for "Mary Filan" as hers, she would be 119 if she were still alive today. However, Conason is a well-known and respected journalist. In an email, Conason said that his reporting for the article "was extensive and thorough, including interviews not only with Mary herself but her neighbor, attorney, social worker and several public officials— as well as a spokesman for the Trump Organization."

Conason added that the picture of Filan in the story could also be considered additional evidence of his contact with her. Sylvia Plachy, the photojournalist whose credit line ran next to the Village Voice photo of Filan, said she remembered taking the picture, but didn't talk to Filan due to how ill she was.

"I do not doubt that it was true," Plachy said in an email. "I have never heard of anyone making up a story that wasn't true at the Voice."

The Trump Organization did not immediately return an inquiry about the incident.

As such, while the report was the work of a reputable journalist and we've found no evidence to contradict its allegations, we have not rated this claim.

Here's how the article, available on the Village Voice website, began (emphasis ours):

For more than 30 years Mary Filan — widowed, 74 years old, and half-paralyzed from a recent stroke — has lived in apartment 6B, 143-15 Barclay Avenue in Flushing. Last Friday afternoon, she answered the insistent doorbell, only to be pushed aside by the henchmen of city marshal Norman Katz, who proceeded to cart her belongings out to an idling truck. Taped to her door was an eviction notice from her landlords, the Trump Organization.

They took Filan's sofa, chairs, TV, jewelry, dishes, and silverware, leaving nothing but a hamper for her to sit on. The marshals and the police tried to convince her to leave, but she refused to go until a neighbor, Bob Hennessy, convinced her to stay in his apartment until she could get help.

"She was distraught," said Hennessy, and by Monday afternoon he was still unable to ascertain where her belongings had been taken. Thanks to her doctor and the Human Resources Administration, Mary Filan is resting in a bed at Parsons Hospital.

"They rang the bell," recalls Filan, "and I was still in bed. I don't get up much unless I have to. They rang and rang, and when I got to the door they pushed it open, and walked in, these three big fat men. They went right in the kitchen and started pulling out drawers, turning 'em upside down into one of these big cartons.

"They said they'd come to put me on the street because I owed four months rent. I don't owe back rent. The last thing I got from Trump was a bill for $10.20 about two weeks ago, and I sent that. They just want me out because they can get twice as much rent." Mary Filan currently pays about $200 a month for her apartment. Her income — from Social Security and a telephone company pension — is under $500 a month.

In a May 12, 1980, follow-up story, Conason reported that a Trump official visited Filan and offered her a different apartment in New Jersey. In that story, Filan's social workers said they found many of her possessions damaged beyond repair in a depot. An unidentified official for the Department of Social Services reportedly said he had "never seen an eviction like this one in 25 years."

"Ordinarily, he said, evictions don't take place on Friday afternoons or in inclement weather, nor are bedridden tenants evicted in this fash­ion. The ill Filan was thrown out, in the pouring rain, on a Friday — at 5 p.m.," the report said.

A search through the historical newspaper archive newspapers.com found no other reporting from the 1980s about this particular incident, although the follow-up story said the "brutal eviction had received unfavorable notice in the Voice and on TV news programs."

"I have no recollection of whether other media covered the story back then — they might have, although the city's other newspapers mainly published puff pieces and gossip about Trump in those days," Conason, who wrote a book published in 2024 that was critical of Trump's influence on the right, said in his email. "But I remember the specifics of this vile incident all too well."

Conason also said the Village Voice's editorial team and libel counsel vetted every article he wrote there before publication. The Trump Organization, he said, never denied the story.

"Had it been inaccurate or false, you can be certain that Trump and his extremely aggressive attorney, the late Roy Cohn, would have not only issued a ringing denial but also sued the paper and me. They didn't," Conason said. (Extensive reporting has been published on Cohn and Trump's lawsuits, some of which targeted journalists.)

It is worth noting that the situation described in Conason's article aligned with other reputable reports about Trump's history of evictions and alleged discriminatory conduct as a landlord.