First Lady Melania Trump has made a desperate move to protect herself in the lawsuit brought against her by Michael Wolff, the author has disclosed.
Wolff revealed on the Inside Trump’s Head podcast that the presidential spouse has hired a new, high-powered legal team to defend her from his groundbreaking lawsuit—which could allow the author to question Melania about her and her husband’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Wolff is suing the first lady under special New York state laws to protect reporters and free speech after she threatened to sue him for $1 billion. He has raised an extraordinary total of more than $775,000 to fund his suit, which he filed in court in New York City in October. The suit, known as a SLAPP action—standing for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation—hands Wolff subpoena power once Melania has been served with it.
But Wolff has disclosed how he has struggled to serve the lawsuit on Trump. He said that one firm that serves lawsuits declined to work with his attorneys and a second had been unable to serve it.
Now Trump has launched a new legal tactic, hiring a massive law firm and asking a federal judge to move the case to the federal court system—a move Wolff said was intended to cause fresh delays. To bring the federal case, she has retained DLA Piper, the third-largest law firm in the world, and, in particular, a partner at the firm who is a former Supreme Court clerk to Justice Neil Gorsuch.
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A new filing in the Supreme Court of the State of New York still lists Melania’s initial counsel—Alejandro Brito, of Coral Gables, Florida—as part of her legal team, but says that DLA’s partner Josh Halpern is now “of counsel” for the case. Halpern clerked for Gorsuch before joining DLA Piper.
Wolff said the move suggested concern in Trump’s camp about the case.
“This is what Trump always does,” Wolff told co-host Joanna Coles. “Hires some new firm, asks questions later.”
And writing on his Substack, HOWL, Wolff said the move showed that he had forced the first lady “out in the open.”
“The immediate cause of this shift of law firms, and the attempt to move to federal court, may be that, after seeming to duck service of our suit (you’re served!) at her logical points of contact—through her lawyer in Coral Gables, and at her residence in Trump Tower—we filed a Motion for Alternative Service early this week in court, asking the court to either deem her served, or to propose an acceptable and achievable method for serving her," he wrote.
Additional legal counsel could signal that the 55-year-old first lady is particularly concerned about the subpoena power it will hand Wolff.
“She cannot let this happen,” Wolff told Coles. “So she will either—I mean, her options are to run out the clock on this, which they will certainly try to do. They will [use] every delay tactic.”
Coles noted that, like the Epstein files, which continue to trickle out damning details about President Trump, Melania cannot run from Wolff and his attorneys forever.
“Eventually, the clock runs out,” she said.
Wolff, who alleges in his suit that the first lady is trying to stifle “legitimate inquiry” into Epstein by threatening to sue him for $1 billion, suggested that one way out Trump might seek would be a settlement—but he has strict terms for that hypothetical.
“I guess at some point they could come and offer to settle this,” he theorized. “And what settlement would I take? I don’t know. I might, what if they were to say, [and] they’re not going to say this, but what if they were to say that they would enter into covenants never again to sue any media organization for libel? Would I accept that?”
He continued, “Possibly, yes. But it would have to be something as definitive as that.”
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement. “Michael Wolff is a serial liar whose malicious, defamatory, and false statements have forced the Daily Beast to make multiple retractions. By repeating these latest lies, the Daily Beast and its reporters are making clear that they have not learned their lesson.”
The White House referred the Daily Beast to Trump’s legal team. Trump’s White House spokesperson Steven Cheung has repeatedly accused Wolff of being “a lying sack of s--t.”
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