A New York federal judge threw out biographer Michael Wolff’s lawsuit against Melania Trump, accusing both parties of an “inappropriate level of tactical gamesmanship.”
The author sued the first lady in October after she allegedly sent a threatening letter, demanding Wolff apologize for inflammatory statement he made about the first lady’s relationship with the late Jeffrey Epstein, or else be sued for $1 billion in damages.
Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, ruled Friday that Wolff’s attempt to prevent the first lady from suing him for his statements, alleging that Trump had a personal relationship with Epstein, was “not how the federal courts work.”
“The Court will not be conscripted to oversee an abusively presented spat,” Judge Vyskocil wrote in her 45-page federal opinion, obtained by TheWrap.
She added in a footnote that Wolff’s “devil-may-care attitude towards the rules of procedure governing litigation in the federal courts” was “inappropriate and does not serve him well.”
Ultimately, the court declined to entertain Wolff’s judgment action because they determined he was trying to “short-circuit” the normal litigation process.
Representatives for Wolff and Trump did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
The dispute stems from a legal demand letter from the first lady threatening to sue Wolff for defamation over public comments he made about her. Wolff’s attorney defended that the journalist was simply doing his job “diligently,” which included asking “important questions that deserve inquiry.” Per the document, Wolff was considering penning a book on Epstein.
Wolff claimed on a Daily Beast podcast that Epstein told him the two Trumps first slept together on Epstein’s private plane, a claim she disputed. The Daily Beast has since retracted its article on the matter, apologized for the story and noted, as Melania Trump wrote in her memoir, that she and Donald Trump met at the Kit Kat Club in New York in 1998.
In April, Melania Trump made a statement at the White House further denying any affiliation with the late child sex offender, stating that she and her lawyers were fighting back against “unfound and baseless lies” that insinuated she had Epstein ties.
