OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
1:32 PM – Friday, August 15, 2025
Trump urged Melania to threaten $1B lawsuit against Hunter after he claimed Epstein introduced them
President Donald Trump partially credited himself for First Lady Melania Trump’s recent legal actions amid the escalation of her feud with former first son Hunter Biden on Thursday. The development followed Hunter’s false assertion that Melania had been introduced to Trump by the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
As noted in her memoir, the GOP president and Slovenian-American first lady met in 1998 at New York City’s Kit Kat Klub. Melania, who was a 28-year-old model at the time, was introduced to Trump at an event being hosted by fashion designer Gianni Versace’s associate, Paolo Zampolli, who represented her as a model.
Melania and Donald’s relationship developed over the following year, and they eventually married in January 2005.
Pertaining to Hunter’s repeated claims, there is no credible evidence connecting Epstein to their meeting, and that claim has been widely debunked, with even far-left fact-checking sites such as Snopes admitting that the claim is “unproven.”
This week, during a discussion with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade, President Trump was asked about Melania’s decision to threaten the younger Biden with a $1 billion lawsuit after he reiterated the unproven claim that Epstein was the individual who initially introduced the couple.
“Was that the right thing to do?” Kilmeade inquired of Trump during Thursday’s broadcast of “The Brian Kilmeade Show,” highlighting the substantial dollar figure.
President Trump responded by asserting that he had encouraged Melania to “go forward with it,” referencing how he has “done pretty well” with his own recent legal actions.
“I told her, ‘Let’s go ahead and do it,'” Trump said, adding: “I let her use my lawyers.”
Then, on Wednesday, Fox News reported that Melania Trump’s attorney had sent a letter to Hunter Biden demanding a full retraction of a YouTube interview he gave to Andrew Callaghan, a left-wing journalist known as the founder and face of Channel 5, a documentary-style media outlet, the previous week.
In the interview, Biden repeated a journalist’s unproven claim that Epstein had introduced Melania to her future husband, a version of events that contradicts the Trumps’ own account of how they first met. The White House later denounced the journalist’s claims as “sick and warped” and fabricated.
Michael Wolff, the journalist whose claim Hunter publicly repeated, has a long history of controversy — with other statements later proven false and others yet to be verified.
Wolff’s Claims:
- Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s “Cuckservative” Quote
Claim: Bannon called Ivanka Trump’s husband Jared Kushner a “cuckservative” in private.
Status: Disputed/denied. Bannon publicly denied ever saying this, and the quote cannot be independently verified.
- Some unnamed source quotes in his book “Fire and Fury“
Claim: Certain colorful anecdotes, such as Trump’s alleged behavior or quotes, attributed to aides.
Status: Proven false or fabricated. Several aides publicly denied these quotes and described behaviors.
- Melania Trump’s Introduction to Donald Trump
Claim: Melania Trump was introduced to Donald Trump through Jeffrey Epstein’s social circle.
Status: Proven false/denied. The Trumps and their lawyers categorically denied it, and related articles citing Wolff were later retracted.
“These false, disparaging, defamatory, and inflammatory statements are extremely salacious and have been widely disseminated throughout various digital mediums,” Trump attorney Alejandro Brito wrote in the letter, which was obtained by Fox News, about Biden’s Epstein comments.
“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,” Brito continued.
The first lady and Brito have since demanded that 55-year-old Biden “immediately retract the false, defamatory, disparaging and inflammatory statements made about Mrs. Trump.” If he failed to comply, the letter continued, the first lady planned to sue the former first son for $1 billion in order to overcome “overwhelming financial and reputational harm.”
Melania’s legal letter afforded Hunter until August 7th to satisfy their demands, which called not only for a retraction of the video, but also for a formal apology. However, rather than comply, Hunter returned to Callaghan’s show on Thursday morning, several days past the first lady’s deadline, and declared, “F— that. That’s not gonna happen.”
“I don’t think that these threats of a lawsuit add up to anything other than a distraction because it’s not about who introduced whom to whom,” Biden told Callaghan. “I don’t know how that, in any way, rises to the level of defamation to begin with.”
“I also think they’re bullies,” Biden added of the Trumps and their legal team, “and they think that a billion dollars is going to scare me. The fact of the matter is that… if they want to sit down for a deposition and clarify 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 that they met, I’m more than happy to provide them the platform to be able to do it.”
In their letter, Melania and Brito proactively identified journalist Michael Wolff as the source of Hunter’s claim, labeling him a “serial fabulist… whose lies were published by The Daily Beast.“
Last month, The Daily Beast ran a fabricated story titled “Melania Trump ‘very involved’ in Epstein Scandal: Author,” which echoed claims similar to Hunter Biden’s while citing Wolff. The outlet deleted the story in its entirety, as the article’s headline and framing were found to be inaccurate, leading to its retraction and an apology for any confusion caused.
Left-wing political analyst James Carville also recently issued an apology to the first lady after making comparable claims on his podcast last week, promptly drawing the attention of Melania’s lawyers.
“First Lady Melania Trump’s attorneys are actively ensuring immediate retractions and apologies by those who spread malicious, defamatory falsehoods. The true account of how the first lady met President Trump is in her best-selling book, Melania,” the first lady’s spokesperson Nick Clemens shared in a statement.
Trump also made a few more remarks in regard to the rumor.
“Jeffrey Epstein had nothing to do with Melania, and introducing … I mean I can tell you how it was, and it was another person actually. I did meet through another person, but it wasn’t Jeffrey Epstein,” Trump assured.
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