Author Michael Wolff thinks first lady Melania Trump is hiding from him over the bombshell lawsuit he filed against her.
Wolff, 72, detailed his struggles with serving papers to the first lady, 55, on an episode of the Daily Beast’s Inside Trump’s Head podcast. Wolff launched a preemptive lawsuit against Melania in October after the first lady threatened to sue him for $1 billion over “false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading, and inflammatory statements” he had made about her and late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The author employed a New York law against SLAPP, or Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation—lawsuits intended to intimidate or silence criticism. He is asking the court to shut down Melania’s legal threats and allow him to question her and President Donald Trump about their ties to Epstein.
But Wolff has found that it isn’t exactly easy to sue the first lady of the United States.
“It would appear that Melania Trump is hiding from me,” he told co-host Joanna Coles. “It’s quite unclear how you serve a subpoena on someone who has one of the most elaborate security details in the world.”
Wolff said he first tried to serve the first lady through her attorney.
“[He] said, ‘Please direct all your communications to Melania Trump through this office, through me.’ So, OK, great. We went to his office to serve him, and he said, ‘No, I’m not accepting service,’” Wolff shared.
Wolff then enlisted the services of a legal process server to hand-deliver the papers to Trump Tower, but once again ran into roadblocks.
“They took the service and then, after they accepted this—somewhere midway in this—we got a call and they were saying, ‘Hey, you’re trying to serve the first lady. We’re not doing that,’” he said. “They’re like, ‘No way are we serving the first lady of the United States.’”
“So then we got another service company, and this was just yesterday. They went to Trump Tower, and two interesting things: The guys at Trump Tower said, ‘We’re just going to throw that in the garbage. We’re not taking that.’ But, to the question of whether or not Melania Trump resides here, they said, ‘Yes.’ So we now have specific testimony, by people who would certainly know, that Melania Trump lives at Trump Tower. She does not live in the White House.”
But Wolff said he expects Melania to be served by the end of this week, once he tells the court that he has exhausted his options.
The Daily Beast has reached out to both the White House and Melania’s attorney for comment.
The first lady accused Wolff of making “extremely salacious” allegations and demanded that he retract statements made in a July 2025 episode of Inside Trump’s Head.
After receiving a complaint from the first lady, the Daily Beast retracted an article based on the podcast and removed a portion of the episode.
“Upon reflection, we have determined that the article did not meet our standards and has therefore been removed from our platforms,” the Beast said. “The first lady points to her best-selling book Melania as the definitive account of her life story.”
Melania said she met Trump at a fashion week party in 1998 and was immediately “drawn to his magnetic energy.” They got married in 2005.
In May, The New York Times reported that Melania had spent fewer than 14 days at the White House since her husband returned to power in January.
As the holidays inch closer, however, the first lady has been hard at work picking out decorations and hosting festivities—despite being recorded in 2018 telling an aide, “I’m working my a-- off at Christmas stuff. You know, who gives a f--- about Christmas stuff and decoration? But I need to do it, right?”
“I would like that you enjoy today the White House,” she told guests on Sunday. “It’s a special place, and we have a Santa visiting today. I hope you saw him and, if not, go to visit him in the Green Room, the family room, game room. He’s waiting for you. You could take pictures and maybe whisper to him what you would like to have as a present for Christmas.”
