A onetime close friend and aide to Melania Trump is accusing the U.S. Justice Department of working on behalf of President Donald Trump to sue her over her tell-all book about the first lady.
CNN’s Chris Cuomo noted the Department of Justice claims Stephanie Winston Wolkoff’s decision to write the book “betrayed” secrecy, which creates a national interest for the agency to file a lawsuit against her.
“The Department of Justice has turned into the Trumps’ own police force, unfortunately. I expected nothing less from them. I didn’t expect for them to waste taxpayers’ money coming after me in regards to my personal relationship with Melania over 15 years,” Winston Wolkoff said.
She added, “I think that they’ve opened up pandora’s box in reference to this contract and so there’s a lot still to be discovered, but it’s just, it’s so unfortunate that this is law and order, according to Donald Trump, which is actually a racist term, is something that he should not be doing right now.”
Watch her comments below:
"The Department of Justice has turned into the Trump's own police force, unfortunately," says a former Melania Trump aide who is facing a lawsuit from the DOJ over her tell-all book about the First Lady. https://t.co/1Zqtvl9Yzb pic.twitter.com/zcPEn2n3nT
— Cuomo Prime Time (@CuomoPrimeTime) October 15, 2020
The Department of Justice accused Winston Wilkoff of breaking their nondisclosure agreement and asked the court to set aside profits from her book, “Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady,” in a government trust, as IJR previously reported.
In a statement issued by Winston Wilkoff on Tuesday, she claimed she fulfilled the terms of agreement with Melania Trump and other confidentiality provisions ended when “the White House terminated the agreement.”
She told Cuomo she worked to make sure she was not breaching any agreement and the claims made in the lawsuit are not true.
“I worked with a First Amendment lawyer and a pre publishing lawyer very carefully to make sure that I wasn’t breaking any of my confidentiality agreements, which ended when my contract was terminated,” Winston Wilkoff said.
She continued, “In addition to that, the lawsuit has so many claims in it that are false, that weren’t covered by the NDA.”
