First lady Melania Trump is being sued by an author who alleges she threatened a billion-dollar lawsuit against him for writing about her supposed ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“Mrs. Trump’s claims are made for the sole purpose of harassing, intimidating, punishing or otherwise maliciously inhibiting Mr. Wolff’s free exercise of speech,” says the lawsuit, which was filed by author Michael Wolff on Tuesday in the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan.
The filing contains a letter sent by Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, to Wolff last week urging him to “immediately retract” and apologize for making “false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading, and inflammatory statements about Mrs. Trump” linking her to Epstein in his book Fire and Fury.
From left, American real estate developer Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), former model Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Fla., Feb. 12, 2000.
Davidoff Studios / Getty Images
Epstein, a convicted sex offender, died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial in New York City.
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The lawsuit, which refers to Trump’s correspondence as the “Threat Letter,” claims that Trump requested an offer of money to compensate for “the alleged ‘overwhelming reputational and financial harm’ that she was ’caused to suffer’” as a result of his book.
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In addition, it states that the letter said that if Wolff did not comply with Trump’s request to provide compensation by 5 p.m. on Oct. 21, she would initiate legal action.
According to NBC News, Trump’s office said in a statement on Wednesday that she “is proud to continue standing up to those who spread malicious and defamatory falsehoods as they desperately try to get undeserved attention and money from their unlawful conduct.”
The legal filing also accuses Trump and U.S. President Donald Trump of making a habit of threatening those who speak out against them to “silence their speech, to intimidate their critics generally, and to
extract unjustified payments and North Korean style confessions and apologies.”
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Wolff, a journalist, regularly covers the Trump administration and often appears on podcasts to provide commentary on its operations, including the president and his wife’s alleged ties to the Epstein scandal, the lawsuit says.
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“He has over the years closely followed and written about the Trump White House; he has closely followed the Epstein scandal; and he has many hours of recorded interviews of Jeffrey Epstein,” it states.
Trump’s threat letter, according to the legal filing, referenced comments Wolff made about Melania Trump on the Daily Beast Podcast this year, and in an online article, which was later removed by the publication, titled Melania Trump ‘Very Involved’ in Epstein Scandal: Author.
Wolff claims in the suit that the comments referenced in the threat letter were taken out of context and maintains that he did not defame Trump.
Donald Trump’s relationship with Epstein during the 1990s and 2000s has been widely documented, though neither he nor his wife has been accused of criminal wrongdoing related to the former financier.
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