First lady Melania Trump to sue Hunter Biden for $1 billion dollars, threatens him to retract Epstein claims
US first lady Melania Trump has demanded Hunter Biden retract comments linking her to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and threatened to sue if he does not.
Trump takes issue with two comments Biden, son of former president Joe Biden, made in an interview this month with British journalist Andrew Callaghan. He alleged Epstein introduced the first lady to now-President Donald Trump.
The statements are false, defamatory and “extremely salacious,” Melania Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, wrote in a letter to Biden.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.Biden’s remarks were widely disseminated on social media and reported by media outlets around the world, causing the first lady “to suffer overwhelming financial and reputational harm,” he wrote.
The first lady’s lawyers say she will seek over $US1 billion ($1.5 billion) in damages if Mr Biden fails to retract his statements.
Mr Biden made the Epstein comments during a sprawling interview in which he lashed out at “elites” and others in the Democratic Party he says undermined his father before he dropped out of last year’s presidential campaign.
“Epstein introduced Melania to Trump. The connections are, like, so wide and deep,” Mr Biden said in one of the comments Mr Trump disputes.
Mr Biden attributed the claim to author Michael Wolff, whom Mr Trump disparaged in June as a “Third Rate Reporter.” He has accused Wolff of making up stories to sell books.
The first lady’s threats echo a favoured strategy of her husband, who has aggressively used litigation to go after critics. Public figures like the Trumps face a high bar to succeed in a defamation lawsuit.
The president and first lady have long said they were introduced by Paolo Zampolli, a modelling agent, at a New York Fashion Week party in 1998.
The letter is dated August 6 and was first reported on Wednesday by Fox News Digital.
Abbe Lowell, a lawyer who has represented Biden in his criminal cases and to whom Brito’s letter is addressed, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
