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Author Michael Wolff is suing First Lady Melania Trump, claiming she had previously threatened to sue him for $1 billion if he didn't retract his recent statements about her related to late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, the Associated Press reports.
Wolff, who wrote four books on President Donald Trump's time in office, filed his lawsuit in state Supreme Court in Manhattan on Tuesday (October 21) and is seeking an unspecified amount in damages, claiming she and her husband "have made a practice of threatening those who speak against them" with costly legal actions “to silence their speech, to intimidate their critics generally, and to extract unjustified payments," as well as garner "confessions and apologies" through tactics he said were comparable to communist North Korea. The author also claimed that the threats intended to shut down inquiry into the couple's involvement with Epstein, who was found dead in his New York federal jail cell while awaiting trail on sex trafficking charges in 2019 during Trump's first administration.
“First Lady Melania Trump 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," said Nicholas Clemens, a spokesperson for the first lady, in a statement responding to Wolff's lawsuit issued to the Associated Press on Wednesday (October 22).
Wolff's lawsuit was filed one day after the first lady's attorney, Alejandro Brito, set a deadline for him to publicly retract statements, issue and apology and pay her for damages. Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, was also threatened by Melania Trump that he would face a potential $1 billion lawsuit regarding his comments linking her to Epstein.
"F**k that. That's not going to happen," Biden said during his third appearance on the YouTube show Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan released on August 14, claiming he "could only can go by what people are saying and I don't know," while referencing Wolff.
In July, the Daily Beast took down its story alleging that Melania Trump had ties to Jeffrey Epstein and issued an apology for suggesting such after being contacted by the first lady's attorneys. Democratic strategist James Carville was also forced to issue a public apology and scrub an episode of his Politics War Room podcast after suggesting she had an "Epstein connection."
“We took a look at what they complained about, and we took down the video and edited out those comments from the episode,” Carville said at the beginning of the following episode. “I also take back these statements and apologize.”
Melania Trump said she met her husband at a September 1998 Fashion Week party at the Kit Kat Klub in New York City in her self-titled memoir published last year.