A judge has dismissed Donald Trump biographer Michael Wolff’s lawsuit against first lady Melania Trump, accusing him of employing “gamesmanship” and “forum-shopping” tactics.
According to TMZ, “Wolff — the longtime Trump biographer behind books like ‘Fire and Fury’ — sued after Melania’s lawyers threatened him with a $1 Billion defamation lawsuit tied to comments he made linking her to late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.”
However, in a scathing opinion, New York-based U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, herself a Trump appointee, accused Wolff of trying to go around the standard legal process by pre-emptively suing Melania rather than defend himself against a suit from her.
“While Plaintiff and the First Lady have a real dispute, they must litigate it according to the same procedures as everyone else,” wrote Vyskocil. “Plaintiff asks for a declaration that, if the First Lady sues him, he deserves to win. That is not how the federal courts work.”
“Whether or not to entertain a declaratory judgment action is a matter of discretion left to the Court,” she wrote later in the opinion. “The Court declines to entertain this one. To do otherwise would be to reward Plaintiff for his gamesmanship, perverting the process by which speech-tort claims are ordinarily resolved. If and when the First Lady sues Plaintiff for defamation, he may raise his defenses and counterclaims in that suit. Indeed, by his own telling, she has already sued him in Florida, under Florida law. He may not short-circuit that process by preemptively litigating his defenses and counterclaims here, under New York law.”
Wolff is a figure notorious for making explosive claims about deep inside knowledge within the Trump White House.
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