Last September, Melania Trump threatened me with a ten-digit lawsuit for publicly saying that she and her future husband, Donald Trump, moved in the same social circles as Jeffrey Epstein in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Rather than cave to her threat, I filed a suit against her in New York State, where we both reside, under the state’s laws that proscribe the use of libel suits and threats for the sole purpose of intimidating speech. Melania’s lawyers subsequently sought to move the case to federal court, where it drew as its judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, a longtime Federalist Society member appointed in New York’s Southern District by Trump in his first term. Obviously, this is the last place a Trump-appointed judge, at least one with any hopes for advancement, would want to be; Judge Vyskocil was no doubt aware that even permitting the neutral (and typical) step of allowing parties to gather admissible evidence would have incurred the president’s wrath. But her decision—and the dubious loophole allowing her to render no decision at all—affords new avenues: My lawyers can now ask the Second Circuit to grant us the discovery that Melania’s lawyers desperately do not want. Our case is not over, and here’s what we’ll do next.
Click through to Michael Wolff’s HOWL to read more on his legal battle with the White House.
