{"id":20206,"date":"2026-07-22T21:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T21:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=20206"},"modified":"2026-07-22T21:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T21:04:12","slug":"melania-trump-seeks-sanctions-against-michael-wolff-over-his-tossed-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=20206","title":{"rendered":"Melania Trump seeks sanctions against Michael Wolff over his tossed lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"


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NEW<\/span>You can now listen to Fox News articles!\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

First lady Melania Trump filed a motion for sanctions on Tuesday against journalist Michael Wolff. <\/p>\n

Wolff unsuccessfully sued Melania Trump to keep her from suing him for $1 billion for alleged defamatory statements he made about her involvement with\u00a0Jeffrey Epstein. Earlier this year, a federal judge tossed Wolff\u2019s lawsuit against the first lady, calling it a “contorted” effort and “not how the federal courts work.” <\/p>\n

Melania Trump is now seeking costs and reasonable attorneys\u2019 fees incurred in these proceedings, along with other appropriate relief, saying Wolff\u2019s lawsuit was “a fundraising drive and a political spectacle.”<\/p>\n

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First lady Melania Trump filed a motion for sanctions on Tuesday against journalist Michael Wolff. <\/span> (AP Photo\/Julia Demaree Nikhinson; Lorenzo Bevilaqua\/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Trump\u2019s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, feels sanctions are warranted for at least three independent reasons. Brito accused Wolff of manufacturing a jurisdictional dispute in an attempt to keep the case in New York state court, using litigation for improper purposes and making a “frivolous” claim. <\/p>\n

“Plaintiff and his counsel asserted a legally frivolous claim, propped it up with factual contentions that lacked any evidentiary support, and used them to run a political and commercial campaign. They should pay for Mrs. Trump\u2019s fees and expenses incurred for the process they abused,” the first lady\u2019s legal team claims. <\/p>\n

The first lady\u2019s legal team said Wolff wrongly claimed she was heavily involved in the Epstein scandal. Her team sent a pre-action notice under Florida\u2019s anti-defamation law identifying defamatory statements and demanding a retraction and apology. According to the court filing, Wolff never answered the demand letter, instead filing the unsuccessful lawsuit against Melania Trump. <\/p>\n

JUDGE TOSSES MICHAEL WOLFF’S LAWSUIT AGAINST MELANIA TRUMP, CALLS IT ‘CONTORTED’ AND NOT HOW ‘COURTS WORK’<\/strong><\/p>\n

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First lady Melania Trump has denied any association with Jeffrey Epstein.<\/span> (Jacquelyn Martin\/AP Photo)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

“Plaintiff filed a patently meritless lawsuit and used it to harass Mrs. Trump in public. The requested sanctions do not depend on a ruling that Plaintiff\u2019s statements were defamatory. They rest on the unsupported and mischaracterized federal submissions, the use of those papers for improper purposes, counsel\u2019s multiplication of the federal proceedings, and the Court\u2019s findings that the action itself was abusively presented as textbook bad-faith forum-shopping. Those independent grounds support sanctions against Plaintiff and his counsel,” the first lady\u2019s legal team argued. <\/p>\n

Wolff, a controversial author known in media circles for his divisive reporting ethics, has written four bestsellers about the president: “Fire and Fury,” “Siege,” “Landslide” and “All or Nothing.”<\/p>\n

The first lady has\u00a0denied any association with Epstein, who died behind bars in 2019 while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges. His death was reported as a suicide.<\/p>\n

DAILY BEAST APOLOGIZES TO MELANIA TRUMP OVER RETRACTED EPSTEIN ALLEGATIONS ARTICLE<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

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\"Michael<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>\n
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Michael Wolff is caught up in a legal battle with first lady Melania Trump.<\/span> (Jared Siskin\/Patrick McMullan)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The\u00a0Daily Beast retracted an article\u00a0last summer called “Melania Trump \u2018Very Involved\u2019 in Epstein Scandal: Author,” that was based on an interview with Wolff, after the outlet received a letter from Brito.<\/p>\n

Wolff did not immediately respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

Fox News Digital\u2019s Brie Stimson contributed to this report. <\/i><\/p>\n

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Brian Flood is a media editor\/reporter for FOX News Digital. Story tips can be sent to <\/i>brian.flood@fox.com<\/i> and on Twitter: @briansflood. <\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! First lady Melania Trump filed a motion…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}