Melania Defies Judge’s Warning With New Legal Attack
Michael Wolff says the first lady is continuing her campaign to punish him.
Michael Wolff says Melania Trump’s latest effort to punish him for suing her under free speech laws is “Trump law in a nutshell.”
The first lady filed a motion for sanctions against Wolff on Tuesday—even after a judge warned against the move—saying the Trump biographer and his lawyers should pay for a host of fees incurred from his lawsuit.

Wolff sued Melania under laws designed to protect the freedom of the press after she threatened a $1 billion lawsuit over his remarks about the Trump family’s ties to Epstein. A federal judge threw out Wolff’s case in May.
Davidoff Studios/Getty
District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, a Donald Trump appointee, threw out Wolff’s lawsuit against Melania in May. But when the first lady announced her plans to seek sanctions against Wolff earlier this month, Vyskocil advised her to walk away.
“I wonder if it’s in the interest of the parties to continue litigating in this court,” she said, according to Courthouse News Service. “I think sometimes people get so caught up in the fervor of the moment that they don’t really stop and think about the cost-benefit analysis of motions that are contemplated and the burden you put a court to.”

District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil—a Trump appointee— warned Melania against her revenge move.
Southern District of New York
Speaking on the Inside Trump’s Head podcast, Wolff said, “So you would think... they would have their tail between their legs. But instead, they actually have gone through.”
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The author predicted that Vyskocil would reject Melania’s motion, prompting the first lady to appeal to the Second Circuit, lose again, and eventually take the case to the Supreme Court.
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“And, of course, nobody knows what’s gonna happen there,” he said.
“But the larger point is that they will have added months and months and months to the legal calendar... and countless expense. So that is... Trump law in a nutshell—delay, harass, intimidate, exhaust, and avoid... testifying at all costs,” he told co-host Joanna Coles.
Representatives for Melania did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Wolff, 72, sued Melania, 56, last October in New York in a so-called anti-SLAPP suit designed to protect freedom of the press, after she threatened to sue him for $1 billion over his remarks about the Trump family’s ties to Epstein, including a claim that Melania may have met Trump through the pedophile’s social circle.

Michael Wolff has written four books about Donald Trump and his administrations: ‘Fire and Fury,’ ‘Siege,’ ‘Landslide,’ and ‘All or Nothing.’
Theo Wargo/Getty Images
The biographer said a White House source told him that nobody saw his lawsuit coming, and that he scared “the bejesus out of... Melania and her lawyers” by raising $837,000 in small-dollar donations through GoFundMe.
The first lady’s attorneys had the case moved to federal court, claiming that she did not live in New York but in Florida. Vyskocil, a longtime Federalist Society member, dismissed his suit after months of delay, saying Wolff filed his suit too early, before Melania had formally sued him.
In Melania’s 26-page motion, her lawyers took issue with the GoFundMe, accusing Wolff of turning his lawsuit into a “fundraising drive and a political spectacle. ”
“Plaintiff filed a patently meritless lawsuit and used it to harass Mrs. Trump in public,” the motion stated. “Plaintiff and his counsel asserted a legally frivolous claim, propped it up with factual contentions that lacked any evidentiary support, and used them to run a political and commercial campaign. They should pay for Mrs. Trump’s fees and expenses incurred for the process they abused.”
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