WASHINGTON (AP) — First lady Melania Trump demanded that 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 that 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. 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.
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,” Biden said in one of the comments Trump disputes. Biden attributed the claim to author Michael Wolff, whom 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 favored 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 modeling agent, at a New York Fashion Week party in 1998.
The letter is dated Aug. 6 and was first reported 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 late Wednesday.
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Jonathan J. Cooper, The Associated Press
