First Lady Melania Trump’s legal team is threatening to hit former President Joe Biden’s son Hunter with a lawsuit. The controversy-prone younger Biden didn’t seem too bothered by it this week.
“F**k that,” Biden said in a video titled “Hunter Biden Apologizes” that was posted Thursday by the “Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan” YouTube channel. Melania’s team is threatening to sue Hunter over defamation for comments he made in a video posted to the same channel earlier this month titled “Hunter Biden Returns” – an apparent reference to the “Hunter Biden Interview” video posted by the channel on July 21.
A day before the video was posted, Fox News Digital published a letter the first lady’s attorney, Alejandro Brito, sent to Biden and his attorney Abbe Lowell. As Callaghan mentioned in the Thursday video, Brito said that legal action calling for $1 billion in damages would be filed if Hunter didn’t retract statements made in the Aug. 5 video, including statements that indicate Melania was introduced to her husband by convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, by Aug. 7.
In her book “Melania” the first lady describes the night she met her husband, President Donald Trump, writing that they met at the Kit Kat Klub in Manhattan on a Friday night in September 1998. She said a female friend invited her out to the club, where the friend’s boyfriend was throwing a party. There, she met Trump, who made time to speak with her even though he had a date to the event. Both the friend and boyfriend are unnamed in an excerpt up on Melania’s X page.
A 2016 article in The New York Times identified the friend who introduced Trump and Melania as Paolo Zampolli, her former modelling agent and current United States Special Representative for Global Partnerships. POLTICO also identified Zampolli as the matchmaker in 2021.
According to a “source close to the matter,” cited by Fox News Digital, Hunter did not comply with the requests outlined in the letter by Aug. 7. The outlet also said that Hunter and his attorney did not respond to requests for comment.
“These false, disparaging, defamatory, and inflammatory statements are extremely salacious and have been widely disseminated throughout various digital mediums,” Brito wrote in his letter to Hunter. “Indeed, the video has since been re-published by various media outlets, journalists, and political commentators with millions of social media followers that have disseminated the false and defamatory statements therein to tens of millions of people worldwide.”
In the Thursday interview with Callaghan, Hunter noted that he was quoting journalist Michael Wolff when he mentioned the claim about Epstein introducing the Trumps. Brito called Wolff “serial fabulist Michael Wolff, whose lies were published by The Daily Beast in the article titled ‘Melania Trump ‘very involved’ in Epstein Scandal: Author,’” and said that outlet issued Melania an apology and that it retracted the article.
“Editor’s Note. After this story was published, The Beast received a letter from First Lady Melania Trump’s attorney challenging the headline and framing of the article. After reviewing the matter, the Beast has taken down the article and apologizes for any confusion or misunderstanding,” said The Daily Beast in a notice where the story used to be.
“[Hunter] Biden then explained that all he did was cite what he has ‘heard and seen reported and written,’” said a report from the HuffPost. “Although he said his source for the allegation came primarily from Wolff, he pointed out that The New York Times reported in 2019 that Epstein claimed to be the matchmaker.”
It also noted that Hunter, who was prosecuted and found guilty in two legal cases – one involved the illegal possession of a firearm and another for federal tax evasion – while his father was in office, said the potential lawsuit against him is a “designed distraction.” Hunter’s father pardoned him last year after previously saying that he would not.
“If they want to sit down for a deposition and clarify the the nature of the relationship between Jeffrey Epstein, if the president and the first lady want to do that and all of the known associates around them at the time of whatever time that they met, I’m more than happy to provide them the platform to be able to do it,” Hunter said of the Trumps this week.
Epstein, who was known for making connections with powerful and influential people, has been a sore spot for the Trump administration this summer. After the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a joint statement that no more documents related to the case would be released, many criticized the move, including conservatives.
Since Epstein’s 2019 death in his jail cell, conspiracies have been swirling around the true nature of his demise. While the DOJ and FBI contend that he died by suicide, people still question that narrative.
In addition to backlash about the DOJ/FBI letter, reports have been trickling in about Trump’s relationship with Epstein. Both men were involved in the New York social scene and the Florida real estate business, according to reports. There are also photographs of Epstein and Trump floating around online, including this one published by the BBC of Trump, Melania, Epstein and convicted Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell that was taken in 2000. Trump contends that while he did know Epstein, the two stopped speaking in the early 2000s.