'He's not her patient': White House responds to explosive book by Donald Trump's niece

Kellyanne Conway tells reporters to leave president's family affairs alone – despite several of his children working on his campaign or as advisers

The White House played down explosive claims against Donald Trump in a new book by his niece, Mary L Trump, scheduled for release next week, arguing that the press should not be meddling in the Trump family's private history.

"He's not her patient, he's her uncle," counsellor to the president Kellyanne Conway told reporters on Tuesday.

"As for books generally, obviously they're not fact checked, nobody's under oath. I know there's always this rush to slap credibility on whoever's getting the president that day," Ms Conway said.

She also scolded reporters to leave the president's family affairs alone, despite the fact several of the president's children work either on his campaign or in the White House and are thus public figures.

"Family matters are family matters," Ms Conway said.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said that the book is full of "falsehoods," though she did not elaborate on any of the specific claims against the president and admitted she had not read the book.

"It's ridiculous, absurd allegations that have absolutely no bearing in truth," Ms McEnany said.

She added that she has "yet to see the book, but it is a book of falsehoods."

In Ms Trump's book, the 55-year-old folds back the curtain on the Trump family's private life and how the president's upbringing has made him "the world's most dangerous man."

Ms Trump claims that her uncle suffered emotional abuse at the hands of his father as a child, which scarred him for life and has left him unfit to be president.

Ms Trump, a clinical psychologist, claims the alleged abuse from his father, Fred Trump Sr, “destroyed” Mr Trump and robbed him of the “ability to develop and experience the entire spectrum of human emotion.”

The book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, has been pitched as part memoir and part psychoanalysis, and is due to be released next week.

It also maintains that the president went to see a movie while his brother was dying in hospital in the 1980s, and that he paid someone to take his college entrance exams.

Ms Trump, estranged from the president for many years, faced a legal challenge from the Trump family to halt publication of the book, but a New York judge ruled to let publication move forward.

A separate ruling is expected soon on whether she violated a 20-year-old confidentiality agreement.