The best-selling author Michael Wolff is suing Melania Trump in an unprecedented court case—after she threatened to sue him for $1 billion.
The author, who is co-host of The Daily Beast’s hit podcast, Inside Trump’s Head, is accusing the First Lady of launching an assault on his free speech and trying to stifle “legitimate inquiry” into Jeffrey Epstein.
The case is the first time Melania Trump has been sued as First Lady and appears to be the first time a president’s wife has been the subject of court action. Wolff is asking the court for permission to question Melania and Donald Trump under oath about their dealings with Epstein.
Wolff’s attorneys filed the case in a New York State court late Tuesday after the First Lady’s legal team sent him a letter threatening a lawsuit for “over $1 billion in damages.”
Melania accused Wolff of making “false, defamatory, and lewd statements” in a letter from her attorney Alejandro Brito, saying he had made “extremely salacious” allegations that have reached tens of millions of people worldwide. The letter from Brito demanded that he retract statements including that Epstein had claimed Melania first slept with Trump on the late pedophile’s private jet—or face being sued for at least $1 billion.
Wolff is using so-called anti-SLAPP laws for the case. The laws ban powerful people from using legal actions to shut down journalism, which are known as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.
Wolff said bringing the case was a “difficult decision” and said, “I did not want to be in a lawsuit, but I also am a journalist and have been one for 40 years.
“I’ve written four books about Donald Trump and have never been sued. Mrs. Trump’s threatened lawsuit is what lawyers call a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, a SLAPP suit. Its purpose was to intimidate and silence me, as Donald Trump has done to so many news organizations and reporters.
“Fortunately, New York has an Anti-SLAPP law. This law protects people sued for making statements involving matters of public concern. In order to avail myself of this protection, I choose to begin an action against her, rather than have her threats hanging over my head indefinitely.”
Wolff is asking the court to shut down Melania Trump’s threats and pay punitive damages—and to allow him to question her and her husband under oath about their relationships with Epstein.
“As a reporter, I’ve never had the opportunity to ask someone questions when their answers have to be given under an oath and in the presence of a court reporter,” he said. “I look forward to asking Melania and Donald Trump about the matters at issue in this case including their relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.”
Wolff’s four books about the president include the 2018 number one bestseller, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. He and Joanna Coles co-host the hit Inside Trump’s Head podcast from the Daily Beast.
In the legal filing Wolff warns that Trump, his wife and their “MAGA myrmidons” try to use legal threats to “intimidate their critics,” “extract unjustified payments” and to get “North Korean style confessions and apologies.”
“These threatened legal actions are designed to create a climate of fear in the nation so that people cannot freely or confidently exercise their 1st Amendment rights,” he says in the suit. “The threats are also intended to shut down legitimate inquiry into the Epstein matter which the Trumps and their collaborators have at every turn sought to impede and suppress.”
The lawsuit alleges that Melania’s threat of legal action against the author is intended to “impede and chill future reporting and writing that Mr. Wolff has committed to doing regarding Epstein, Mr. Trump and Mrs. Trump.
“In many respects that is the primary purpose of these claims,” the legal papers say.
Wolff alleges that the libel allegations Melania has made against him “lack substantial basis in law or in fact” and “cannot overcome Constitutional protections.”
The suit adds: “Mrs. Trump’s claims are made for the purpose of harassing, intimidating, punishing, or otherwise maliciously inhibiting Mr. Wolff’s free exercise of speech.”
The Daily Beast has asked the White House for comment.
Trump has repeatedly disparaged Wolff, calling him a “Third Rate Reporter, who is laughed at even by the scoundrels of the Fake News.”
Melania’s letter to Wolff refers to an article based on his appearance on an episode of Inside Trump’s Head titled “Trump’s Epstein Scandal Can’t Stop Won’t Stop.” The Daily Beast retracted the article, headlined “Melania Trump ‘Very Involved’ in Epstein Scandal: Author.” The Daily Beast said that after a complaint from the First Lady, “upon reflection,” the story did “not meet our standards and has therefore been removed from our platforms.
“In response to a letter from the First Lady’s attorneys, The Daily Beast has also removed a portion of an episode of The Daily Beast Podcast titled ‘Trump’s Epstein Scandal Can’t Stop Won’t Stop’ referencing the First Lady. The First Lady points to her best-selling book Melania as the definitive account of her life story. We apologize to the First Lady and our readers.”
In her own book, Melania, the first lady, wrote that she met Trump at New York’s Kit Kat Klub during the 1998 Fashion Week after being “drawn to his magnetic energy.” They got engaged six years later and were wed in 2005.
