Author Michael Wolff says his explosive lawsuit against Melania Trump will lift the “dark curtain” on the “secrets” entangling the first lady, President Donald Trump, and Jeffrey Epstein.
The Trump-biographer and co-host of the Daily Beast’s hit podcast, Inside Trump’s Head, sued Melania on Tuesday, accusing her of assaulting his free speech and trying to stifle “legitimate inquiry” into the late convicted sex offender.
In the latest episode of the podcast, Wolff told co-host Joanna Coles that his lawsuit, filed in a New York State court, could expose new layers of the Trumps’ relationship with Epstein thanks to the subpoena powers it gives him.
“I can subpoena the first lady, the president, and anyone else who might shed light on the relationship of Donald Trump and Melania Trump to Jeffrey Epstein,” the best-selling author said. “In other words, this might be a way to actually get to the bottom of this story, to open the curtain, the dark curtain. And we’ll see how they feel about that.”
Wolff is asking the court for permission to question Trump, 79, whose years-long friendship with Epstein has drawn scrutiny, under oath. He is also seeking to depose Melania, 55.
“This lawsuit is an opportunity to reconstruct their lives together,” he said. “This is precisely what Donald Trump wants covered up.”
Wolff, 72, who interviewed Epstein about the president in 2017 while researching his book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, recalled that many of their conversations revolved around “the real closeness, the intimacy” between Trump and Epstein.
According to Wolff, Epstein revealed that he and Trump were “involved in every aspect of each other’s lives, social lives, sexual lives, business lives,” over the course of their friendship, which lasted from the 1980s through the 2000s.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
Wolff also said he plans to subpoena various documents on the disgraced financier, calling it a “back door” to the “Epstein files” that Democrats and some MAGA Republicans have been chasing.
He confirmed that he could also subpoena Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, after Coles noted the infamous photo of Epstein, Trump, Melania, and Maxwell that was taken at Mar-a-Lago in 2000.
Wolff said, “Everybody who was involved in that circle during that time period is someone who we’ll certainly think about calling.”
The Trump biographer sued Melania after her legal team sent him a letter threatening a lawsuit for “over $1 billion in damages.”
The first lady 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 “Lolita Express”—or face being sued for at least $1 billion.
Wolff pointed out that such threats have become the Trump camp’s default tactic for silencing coverage they don’t like.
“This has just become their trick in the book,” he said. “[They say] ‘We don’t want this discussion to go on. How do we stop it? We threaten people with lawsuits for billions of dollars.’”
Even with questionable legal grounds, Wolff noted that the move has so far proven shockingly effective: “They sue the media and the media goes quiet.”
That’s why Wolff’s “turning of the tables” has apparently left the White House dumbfounded. Wolff told Coles, “Someone in the White House said to me this morning, ‘Well, no one saw that coming.’”
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.
He is asking the court to shut down Melania’s threats and pay punitive damages, alleging that the libel allegations Melania has made against him “lack substantial basis in law or in fact” and “cannot overcome Constitutional protections.”
“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 is intended to “impede and chill future reporting and writing that Mr. Wolff has committed to doing regarding Epstein, Mr. Trump and Mrs. Trump.”
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.”
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.”
Melania says 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.
Wolff’s case is the first time Melania has been sued as First Lady and appears to be the first time a president’s wife has been the subject of court action.
Find and subscribe to Inside Trump’s Head with Michael Wolff and Joanna Coles on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes of incomparable insight into the psyche of the world’s most talked-about man drop every Tuesday and Thursday evening on YouTube and Wednesday and Friday mornings on other podcast platforms.
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