Author Michael Wolff has claimed that President Donald Trump’s legal team is working behind the scenes in his lawsuit against first lady Melania Trump.
In a new column for his Substack, HOWL, Wolff wrote about his lawsuit against the first lady, which U.S. District Court Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, a Trump-appointed judge in the Southern District of New York, dismissed in May 2026, calling it a “contorted” effort to prevent Melania from suing him, saying that “is not how the federal courts work.” Wolff is appealing the decision.
He said it seems to him there is a “strong indication of how directly [the lawsuit] appears to be overseen by the White House.”
He writes that it is not “a particular surprise” but that it offers “another insight into Trump law, and Trump justice, and litigation as another arm of Trump’s command-and-control tactics.”
“The White House today is peopled by, and depends on, lawyers who have decided to sacrifice their careers for Trump—or, at least, the possibilities of having careers outside of the world of Donald Trump,” Wolff wrote.
Wolff particularly points out longtime Trump lawyer Boris Epshteyn, who Wolff says “arguably holds the single most influential legal portfolio in Trump world,” including his partnership with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is also a former personal attorney for the president.
As it relates to his lawsuit against Melania, Wolff said that the first lady’s lawyers “in Trump fashion” had filed a request for sanctions, known as Rule 11, which Wolff called a “pecious, ridiculous, and shameless claim,” but said it was “far from the most telling sign of Trump law at work.”
Wolff said that before the judge’s ruling, he “received a text from Boris Epshteyn that read: ‘Hey team–what’s our timing on Rule 11? Reading filing now.’”
A few minutes later, he received another text reading “Wrong recipient—please delete.”
Wolff explained that “Epshteyn is a frequent off-the-record communicator with the press, and we have been in touch at various times as I’ve written about Trump. Hence, my presence in his address book. Hence, a text in all likelihood about me mistakenly went to me (or not mistakenly… but as another act of intimidation?).”
When the Daily Beast reached out to the White House for comment, spokesman Davis Ingle said, “Michael Wolff is a lying piece of s--t.”
Ingle, 32, is a communications graduate of Florida’s Southeastern University, where his father, Kent Ingle, is president. SEU boasts that more than two-thirds of its students attend online or through extension courses at 200 “partner sites,” which do not have to be accredited.
