First Lady Melania Trump has spent years largely avoiding public battles over criticism directed at her or her family. While she has occasionally responded to particularly personal attacks, she has generally remained out of the political spotlight, even as President Donald Trump has faced constant legal and political controversies.
One issue, however, appears to be different.
Melania Trump is now seeking sanctions against author Michael Wolff after he made claims linking her to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, allegations that she has repeatedly denied.
According to Fox News, attorneys for the first lady filed a motion Tuesday asking a federal court to sanction Wolff, arguing that he abused the legal system by filing what they describe as a frivolous lawsuit after receiving notice of potential defamation claims.
The dispute stems from comments Wolff reportedly made suggesting that Melania Trump had a close relationship with Epstein. TMZ reported that after those remarks became public, attorneys representing the first lady sent Wolff a pre-litigation demand letter identifying what they considered defamatory statements and requesting that he retract the claims and issue an apology.
Instead of complying with those demands, Wolff filed a lawsuit seeking a declaratory judgment that would effectively shield him from a future defamation suit.
That strategy proved unsuccessful.
Earlier this year, a federal judge dismissed Wolff’s lawsuit, describing it as a “contorted” legal maneuver and stating that it was “not how the federal courts work,” according to Fox News.
With that case dismissed, Melania Trump’s legal team is now asking the court to require Wolff and his attorneys to pay the legal expenses incurred in responding to what they characterize as an abusive filing.
In court papers, her attorneys argued that Wolff improperly used the judicial process for publicity rather than to resolve a legitimate legal dispute.
“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,” the filing states. “They should pay for Mrs. Trump’s fees and expenses incurred for the process they abused.”
The filing goes on to accuse Wolff of turning the litigation into what Trump’s attorneys described as both “a fundraising drive and a political spectacle.”
Her legal team also argued that sanctions are appropriate regardless of whether a court ultimately rules on the underlying defamation allegations.
“Plaintiff filed a patently meritless lawsuit and used it to harass Mrs. Trump in public,” the attorneys wrote.
“The requested sanctions do not depend on a ruling that Plaintiff’s statements were defamatory. They rest on the unsupported and mischaracterized federal submissions, the use of those papers for improper purposes, counsel’s multiplication of the federal proceedings, and the Court’s findings that the action itself was abusively presented as textbook bad-faith forum-shopping.”
The motion asks the court to hold both Wolff and his counsel accountable for what Trump’s attorneys describe as misuse of the legal process.
Wolff has long been one of President Trump’s most prominent critics, authoring multiple books about the Trump administration that have generated both media attention and repeated denials from Trump and his associates.
For Melania Trump, however, this dispute appears to cross a line she has shown little willingness to tolerate. She has consistently denied any suggestion that she maintained a close relationship with Epstein, who died in federal custody in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
