Donald Trump’s younger brother, Robert, died on Saturday night, a day after the US president visited him in a New York hospital. He was 72.

“It is with 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,” Trump said in a statement.

The president was expected to attend the funeral, an aide said. He has a busy travel schedule in coming days with plans to visit four battleground states as part of his re-election campaign.

Robert Trump was a business executive and real estate developer.

Trump made a visit to see his ailing brother on Friday at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Centre. He told reporters that his brother was “having a hard time” with an undisclosed illness.

In June, Robert Trump had won a temporary restraining order against his and the president’s niece, Mary Trump, to stop her from publishing a tell-all book that offered an unflattering look of the US president and his family. He said the book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” would violate a confidentiality agreement tied to the estate of his father Fred Trump Sr, who died in 1999.

A state supreme court judge in Poughkeepsie, New York, later denied a request to stop publication and cancelled the temporary restraining order.