“To be perfectly honest,” Michael Wolff said, “I’d like nothing better than to get Donald Trump and Melania Trump under oath in front of a court reporter and actually find out all of the details of their relationship with Epstein.”
Author Michael Wolff has filed a lawsuit against First Lady Melania Trump, claiming that she threatened to sue him for $1 billion upon learning that Wolff was planning to report and write on her alleged ties to the late billionaire and convicted sex predator Jeffrey Epstein.
According to NBC News, the lawsuit was filed Tuesday in a New York Supreme Court in Manhattan.
“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,” the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit includes as an exhibit a letter that Melania Trump’s attorney, Alejandra Brito, sent to Wolff, the author of “Fire and Fury.” In it, Brito demanded that Wolff retract and apologize for public comments likening Melania Trump to Epstein, saying that the author must make a “monetary proposal to Mrs. Trump to ameliorate the harm that you have caused.”
Melania Trump, notes NBC News, has aggressively pushed back against what her lawyers describe as false reports linking her to Epstein. Trump’s office also claims that the First Lady 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.”
Though Wolff has elected to take legal action, the Daily Beast, which published his comments in a story headlined “Melania Trump ‘Very Involved’ in Epstein Scandal: Author,” has since issued an apology and retraction. In an editor’s note, the Beast said that, “Upon reflection, we have determined that the article did not meet our standards and has therefore been removed from our platforms.”
Wolff claims that some of the comments published on the Beast were taken out of context, and that he at no point defamed Melania Trump. Instead, in his lawsuit, Wolff notes that he has “accrued many hours of interviews of Jeffrey Epstein conducted over several years,” and that the First Lady’s legal “threats are also intended to shut down the legitimate inquiry into the Epstein matter which the Trumps and their collaborators have at every turn sought to impede and suppress.”
In a social media post made Wednesday, Wolff said that, if his lawsuit proceeds, he hopes to eventually depose the Trumps.
“To be perfectly honest,” he said, “I’d like nothing better than to get Donald Trump and Melania Trump under oath in front of a court reporter and actually find out all of the details of their relationship with Epstein.”
Sources
Author Michael Wolff sues Melania Trump over effort to kill tell-all book
Author Michael Wolff sues Melania Trump over Jeffrey Epstein threat
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