Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, the former unofficial senior adviser to the First Lady, has written a damning new book titled 'Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady'.
- Oct 15, 2020
AceShowbiz - The author behind a damning new book about America's First Lady, Melania Trump, is facing a lawsuit from the U.S. Justice Department.
Officials claim Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, the former unofficial senior adviser to President Donald Trump's wife, broke a nondisclosure agreement by writing the tell-all, "Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady", which was released last month (September).
In a complaint filed on Tuesday (October 13) in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., Justice Department lawyers accused Stephanie, who worked as an unpaid adviser to Melania throughout 2017 and helped organize the presidential inauguration, of breach of contract, stating she "promised to maintain strict confidentiality over nonpublic, privileged and/or confidential information that she might obtain during her service."
"She was specifically prohibited from publishing, reproducing or otherwise divulging any such information to any unauthorized person or entity in whole or in part," the lawsuit reads.
The Justice Department officials, who are asking lawmakers to place the book's profits into a government trust, also allege Stephanie never submitted a draft of her book to the First Lady or her White House advisers for review, despite the inclusion of personnel decisions expressly prohibited by the nondisclosure agreement.
The department executives are also pursuing a criminal investigation into whether former national security adviser John Bolton unlawfully disclosed classified information in his book, "The Room Where It Happened", which was also published by Simon & Schuster in June.
In her book, Stephanie made damning claims about the First Lady, saying that was she was selfish and image-obsessed. She also detailed Melania's alleged strained relationship with her stepdaughter Ivanka Trump and claimed that she was largely unfazed by her husband’s insults and lewd comments about women.
