MAGA judge mistakenly 'ruled against the Trumps' in Melania Epstein case: biographer
Trump biographer Michael Wolff remains unfazed after a MAGA-appointed federal judge tossed his lawsuit against Melania Trump on Friday.
"She may have actually effectively ruled against the Trumps without saying so," Wolff said in a podcast episode on Saturday, referring to the federal judge who dismissed his suit against Melania. "Kicking the case out of federal court by default puts it back into state court, which is what we wanted in the first place."
Wolff sued the first lady last year after her lawyers threatened him with a defamation lawsuit because he connected her to Jeffrey Epstein.
On Friday, New York-based U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, a Trump appointee, accused Wolff in a scathing opinion of trying to go around the standard legal process by pre-emptively suing Melania instead of defending himself against her lawsuit.
"I mean, we knew from the beginning, when we drew a Trump judge in federal court in the Southern District in New York, that that was problematic," Wolff said. "She was in this incredibly awkward position of having to decide a case directly involving the president's family."
According to Wolff, he filed his lawsuit in a New York state court, but Melania's lawyers moved it to federal court. Vyskocil then determined that Melania is a Florida resident.
"One of the ways you get to be a federal case is if the parties are from two different states," the New York-based Wolff explained. "This is an important point because if the judge found that she doesn't live in Florida, then it would not have been a federal case."
Wolff said he would have preferred to see the case play out in a New York state court because of "what are called anti-SLAPP laws, which is to say that you can't use threats of libel to intimidate people."
From what he can tell, Melania "lives in New York" and "never effectively moved out of Trump Tower."
He added, "This is and has always been, from our side, a free speech case. It's not about money."