Robert Trump, the president’s younger brother, died in New York City at the age of 71. He was reportedly sick for several months and was hospitalized at New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan.

Robert Trump was an Executive Vice President of the Trump Organization and a real estate developer. Part of his duties included overseeing the organization’s Atlantic City casinos. 

“It is with a heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother, Robert, peacefully passed away tonight. He was not just my brother, he was my best friend. He will be greatly missed, but we will meet again. His memory will live on in my heart forever. Robert, I love you. Rest in peace,” President Trump said.

The president had visited his brother on Friday before speaking to the New York City Police Benevolent Association in New Jersey and spoke via telephone to his room on Saturday from New Jersey.

“Uncle Robert, we love you. You are in our hearts and prayers, always,” Ivanka Trump wrote on Twitter Saturday night. “Robert Trump was an incredible man – strong, kind, and loyal to the core. Anyone who encountered him felt his warmth immediately. He will be deeply missed by our entire family,” Eric Trump posted on Twitter.

During his White House press briefing before heading to New York City to see his brother, President Trump spoke about his brother’s health struggles without divulging too many details. 

“I have a wonderful brother. We have a great relationship for a long time, from day one, so long ago. And he’s in the hospital right now,” Trump said Friday when asked by the media about his brother’s condition.

“Hopefully he’ll be alright, but he’s… he’s pretty… he’s having a hard time,” he added.

Later Friday as he headed to see his brother, President Trump told reporters: “He’s having a tough time.”

Robert Trump was the youngest of five children by Fred and Mary Anne Trump. The other siblings are Fred Trump Jr., Maryanne Trump Barry, and Elizabeth Trump Grau. Fred Trump Jr. died in 1981.

Robert Trump avoided the limelight and stayed out of Washington’s political scene, although he said during the presidential race of 2016 that he supported his brother’s candidacy completely. He had sued his niece, Mary Trump, and won a temporary restraining order to stop her from publishing a tell-all book that offered a very unflattering look of the president and his family. A Poughkeepsie, NY judge later reversed the restraining order. 

In the restraining order, Robert Trump had said the book titled “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” would violate a confidentiality agreement from the estate of his father Fred Trump Sr, who died in 1999.

Robert Trump had married his second wife Ann Marie Pallan in March and the couple lived on Long Island. He and his first wife were divorced in 2007 after 23 years of marriage.

Funeral details have not been announced.