‘The Trumps gagged me and tried to silence me and the truth,’ claims Stephanie Winston Wolkoff
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Melania Trump shares farewell address video
Melania Trump’s former adviser and friend has hinted that she has even more recordings to back up unflattering claims she made about the former First Lady in her memoir, after the Justice Department (DOJ) dropped its case against her book.
In her memoir, Melania & Me, which was released in September 2020, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, 50, made multiple claims about Ms Trump, including that funds for former President Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017 had been misused.
Her book also recalled disagreements that the former First Lady had with her husband Donald Trump, as well as an apparently tense rivalry with his daughter Ivanka.
Ms Winston Wolkoff, who worked as an unpaid adviser to Ms Trump from January 2017 to February 2018, has said that the anecdotes are based on covert recordings she made of the former First Lady during her time working for her and she released several of the tapes while promoting the book.
Melania Trump shares farewell address video
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She made the claims after the US Justice Department dropped a lawsuit against her on Monday, in which she had been accused of breaking a non-disclosure agreement with her tell-all book about Ms Trump.
While the author has said that the terms of her non-disclosure agreement were fulfilled and that confidentiality clauses expired once her contract for working for Ms Trump was terminated, the DOJ argued in the initial suit that she breached its terms by failing to share a draft of her book with the government prior to publication.
However, on Monday, just two weeks after Joe Biden became president, the DOJ dropped the case, later telling Politico that doing so was “in the best interests of the United States based on the facts and the law.”
Ms Winston Wolkoff made waves last year after she released short recordings of Ms Trump that she covertly made while working for her, with the former first lady heard calling Stormy Daniels a “porn hooker” in one of them.
In another she distanced herself from Mr Trump’s immigration policies, while she was heard asking “who gives a f*** about Christmas stuff and decorations?” in a separate recording.
Following the dismissal of the lawsuit on Monday, Ms Winston Wolkoff posted a series of triumphant tweets, claiming that she had even more recordings of Ms Trump.
“Melania opened Pandora’s box involving the DOJ. The enormous trove of communications & documentations I possess and shared tell the true story about ‘why’ and ‘how’ the contracts were ‘created’ and ‘terminated’ and who was involved. TRUTH PREVAILS,” she tweeted on Tuesday.
Ms Winston Wolkoff added: “The Trumps gagged me and tried to silence me and the truth. Justice prevailed! The Trumps used the DOJ as their personal lawyers. Justice is being restored in our great nation to serve the people and not the interests of those in power.”
She claimed that the dismissal of the department’s case against her was “vindication against forces from the former President, and Melania on down, who attempted to wield their power to silence me by intimidating me from speaking the truth.
“This lawsuit was a meritless attempt by Donald and Melania to use the Justice Department to pursue their personal interests, silencing and intimidating me over speech protected by the First Amendment.”
The case against Ms Winston Wolkoff was seen as unusual because it used a legal route ordinarily reserved by the US government for former security services officials and whistleblowers.
A litany of former Trump staffers also published memoirs, including those who left the White House on bad terms with the former president, without facing legal action.
After the book was released, Stephanie Grisham, a spokeswoman for Ms Trump, said the memoir is “not only wildly self-aggrandising, it’s just not truthful.”