Trump takes issue with two comments Biden, son of former President Joe Biden, made in an interview this month with American 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.
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.
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.
