Author sues Melania Trump for threatening him over Epstein reporting

Author sues Melania Trump for threatening him over Epstein reporting
Melania Trump (Shutterstock)

Journalist and author Michael Wolff has sued First Lady Melania Trump after her legal team threatened action against him over an article alleging that she was "very involved" in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

Last month, The Daily Beast retracted a report based on Wolff's research after receiving legal threats from the first lady's team. Threats were later sent directly to Wolff.

"This correspondence serves as a demand under Florida Statute § 770.011 that you immediately retract and apologize for the false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements made about Mrs. Trump, which were published by The Daily Beast Company, LLC ('The Daily Beast'), and contained in the article titled 'Melania Trump 'Very Involved' in Epstein Scandal: Author," Trump's attorneys wrote. "Failure to comply will leave Mrs. Trump with no choice but to pursue any and all legal rights and remedies available to recover the overwhelming financial and reputational harm that you have caused her to suffer."

In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, attorneys for Wolff asked for damages under New York's anti-SLAPP law, which was designed to prevent intimidation lawsuits.

"Mrs. Trump and her 'unitary executive' husband along with their MAGA myrmidons have made a practice of threatening those who speak against them with costly SLAPP actions in order to silence their speech, to intimidate their critics generally, and to extract unjustified payments and North Korean style confessions and apologies," the lawsuit noted. "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."

Wolff asked the court to find the first lady to be liable for costs, attorney's fees, compensatory damages, and punitive damages "on the grounds that the claims were made by Mrs. Trump for the sole purpose of harassing, intimidating, punishing, or otherwise maliciously inhibiting Mr. Wolff's free exercise of speech."

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President Donald Trump was skewered on CNN's "NewsNight" with host Sara Sidner over his reluctance to address a key issue during his meeting with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Mamdani and Trump met at Gracie Mansion on Monday for a closed-door meeting. During a brief press conference afterward, Mamdani revealed that he and Trump did not make headway on extending Temporary Protected Status for immigrants in the U.S., an issue that has caused a lot of strife in immigrant communities.

Josh Rogin, global security analyst for Washington Post Intelligence, blasted Trump for ignoring the issue.

"The thing that really matters is that they talked about it; they made no progress, which is the temporary protected status for Haitians, Syrians, and Afghans- people who have fled oppression, repression, and torture, many of whom did so in the defense of America, working with the U.S.military," Rogin said. "We're sending them back to the slaughter, and it's unconscionable."

The Trump administration has moved to terminate TPS for immigrants from 13 countries, throwing the legal status of millions of legal residents into jeopardy.

Rogin reamed Trump for appearing uninterested in the damage the policy decision has caused.

"Mamdani tried to raise it with Trump, and Trump didn't really seem that interested in it," Rogin said. "And it affects New Yorkers, but it affects people all over this country. Again, many of whom fought and sacrificed with our military, and we're going to send them back to be murdered by the taliban. That came up today. Mamdani brought it up. But Trump didn't really seem interested."

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Things got testy on CNN's "The Source" as host Kaitlan Collins fact-checked Mike Waltz, the Trump administration's ambassador to the United Nations, about the president's reasoning for banning select media outlets from the White House.

On Friday, Trump revoked the press credentials for CNN, MS NOW and Politico because of what he described as "fake news" coverage of his economy and the war in Iran. During the segment, Waltz claimed that Trump was right to invoke "national security" in his ban because those outlets have published stories relying on anonymous sources, especially about the U.S.'s munitions supply in the Middle East.

Collins fact-checked Waltz about the claim, which caused the segment to get heated.

"Well, that's not what the president cited when he banned CNN and the two other outlets," Collins said to Waltz. "But on the munitions, those were in the Inspector General's report from the Pentagon talking about shortages ... [and they are] obligated to give that report to Congress."

Waltz seemed caught off guard by Collins' fact-check.

"I mean, you know, I hope we have a lot of air time to talk about this," Waltz said. "There's an investigative report, but there's also been a whole slew of anonymous sources. And we know our adversaries pay attention to the headlines. And when you're essentially signaling to the world that the United States is out of ammunition, when in fact, that's not true. That's a legitimate concern. And it certainly is a threat to our national security."

"The report talked about munition shortages, did it not?" Collins shot back.

Waltz was taken aback by the question and stammered as he claimed that it pointed to cuts under the Obama administration.

"That's what the IG report was talking about. That's very different than anonymous sources on the Secretary," Waltz said.

Wall Street Journal editor-at-large Gerard Baker "diagnosed" himself on Monday with a severe case of "TDS" — or "Trump Derangement Syndrome," a derogatory term MAGA supporters use for anyone they believe just hates Trump for the sake of hating him.

This wasn't always the case, Baker said. For most of Trump's political career, "I’ve found much that is repellent in the man’s character and rhetoric. But whatever his shortcomings, it seemed clear to me by 2016 that the country had, through years of bipartisan failure and the transformative effects of a malign cultural revolution, reached a point where radical change was needed." Even January 6 didn't change this, he said, since he believed American institutions had survived and rejected his worst impulses.

Now, however, wrote Baker, I have "not one malady but three: as my condition has steadily progressed over the last year from Trump disappointment syndrome through Trump disillusionment syndrome to a full-blown case of Trump dismay syndrome."

When Trump won another term, wrote Baker, he had a simple mandate: just control the border, bring down prices, get "wokeness" out of the government, and avoid foreign wars. That's not what happened.

"Thanks to a self-indulgent tariff fixation based on a profound misunderstanding of international economics, an insouciance about public finances that has widened the deficit, and a reckless military adventure that has choked off global energy supplies, inflation and interest rates are higher than they were in November 2024," he wrote. As a result, "we now have gasoline prices 30% higher than they were two years ago, diesel 60% higher, and the average mortgage rate nearly a percentage point higher, adding more than $2,000 a year to a typical home buyer’s interest cost."

Even Trump's efforts at the border went wrong, wrote Baker: "The unnecessarily cruel and indiscriminate approach has caught many in its dragnet who shouldn’t be treated that way and is fundamentally un-American," and it resulted in the GOP seeing their improvements among Hispanic voters wiped out in time for the midterms.

Now, he wrote, Trump has engaged in reckless "caesarism," trying to stamp his name and sensibilities on every monument in D.C., while renaming bodies of water and trying to bully foreign powers into U.S. annexation.

"Instead of seizing an unrivaled opportunity to shift America off the path of progressive endangerment, the GOP risks handing it back to the Democrats and their own obsessions," Baker concluded. "It’s enough to give anyone a case of Trump derangement syndrome."

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