Melania Trump in World of Hell in Lawsuit Donald Feared Most

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1:47Michael Popok:Included with Prime. Well, this might go down as one of the bonehead moves by a Trump, in this case Melania Trump. Did she just open the door to have to be examined under oath, cross-examined under oath about where she lives, where she resides, how much time she spends with Donald Trump, how much time she spends or doesn't spend derelict of her duty to be the First Lady? Does she live on Fifth Avenue in New York? Does she live at Mar-a-Lago in Florida? Does she live at the White House? Where is her residence? All now up for grabs because she filed a notice of removal to take Michael Wolfe's case, which he filed to preempt her$1 billion defamation case.

2:31Michael Popok:He filed the New York State Supreme Court, a state court. She filed a notice of removal. Yeah, she got a Trump judge. I'm going to talk about that in a minute. But this, if I'm the lawyers for Michael Wolff, and I know they're already on the case for this, you asked for limited jurisdictional discovery to put Mrs. Trump under oath about her life and lifestyle and where she lives. Because the only ticket into the federal court is to argue that you have diversity of jurisdiction, meaning the two parties, one above the V and one below the V, you know, Michael Wolff versus Melania Trump, that they're both from different states.

3:10Michael Popok:Because if they're from the same state, it stays in state court. You have no way to get into federal court. So Melania has to argue, although she hasn't yet, she has to argue that she is a resident of a different state than Michael Wolff in New York. So she's going to have to argue Florida. But is she? And what about what they declared for Barron Trump? Barron Trump goes to NYU. I don't know. Is he getting in-state tuition rates at NYU? Where is his place of residence? And why is it Florida? Why isn't it New York where she spends most of her time? What do her tax returns say? Where has she claimed in terms of property taxes?

3:53Michael Popok:Oh, this is going to be fun. Now, the question is, is the Trump judge, Mary Vucassell, is she going to allow this type of discovery? Let's talk about it here on Midas Touch and on Legal AF. So the headline is, back in October, Michael Wolfe, the journalist, got a letter demanding a billion dollars, or she was going to file a defamation case against Michael Wolfe for lying, allegedly, about her connectivity to the world of Jeffrey Epstein, the web of Jeffrey Epstein and her husband. Michael Wolff said, you don't need to sue me. I'll sue you first. So he ran to the state court. I have a copy of it.

4:36Michael Popok:It's up in Legal AF Substack, and I'll read it to you. And he went through methodically all of the article, all of the comments that Melania Trump didn't like that he wrote in the Daily Beast and other places, and basically said they're either true or their fact-based opinion, or they're taken out of context. So it gave them another opportunity to go through each one of them again. Well, she didn't like that. So she's filed to try to get the case into New York federal court. But first, let me play you a clip because I got to interview Michael Wolfe right around the time that he filed this suit about his approach.

5:16Michael Popok:Let's play the clip of Michael Wolfe on Legal AF. Right. And certain of the comments that you made just for our audience were about the relationship between Donald Trump and Melania. And it looks like you got a threat letter, which you've attached to the lawsuit that's been filed in the New York State Supreme Court, which is the trial level court in New York, giving you until yesterday to do a bunch of things towards Melania, including an apology, or she was going to sue you, but you sued her first. Talk about the receipt of the letter, what happened yesterday, and the filing of the lawsuit today.

5:53Well, I'm not the first person to get such a letter, and also not about such a subject. I mean, a lot of people have, or a number of people have made statements related to Melania Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. I mean, there are pictures of them together, so this is not a, this is not far-fetched. And so the discussion is what kind of relationship that they had. And a lot of these are questions, what kind of, you know, who introduced them, in what circumstance, all of these questions, which clearly the Trumps do not want asked, and they certainly don't want answered. So I got a letter on the 15th, which said they're going to sue me for a billion dollars unless I retract and apologize.

6:47Nothing that I've said in any reasonable, actually, even in any wild conception of this can be called defamatory. Actually, what I've said is not only just statements of fact, but mild, mild circumstances. They knew each other. They might have been in the same room when that kind of that kind of thing. But this entire discussion, they are they are deeply, deeply allergic to.

7:20Michael Popok:And here's what he said in his lawsuit that she, of course, is trying to get federal judges to give her cover. He talks about the October 15th demand letter. It was sent by Donald Trump's lawyer of choice for all things defamation, Alejandro Brito, a lawyer I had never heard of in Coral Gables, Florida, and a threat letter about the billion dollars if he didn't apologize and retract. But he's arguing that that threat is a strategic lawsuit against public participation. In other words, a lawsuit that is only being filed or threatened to be filed in order to shut Michael up and to chill his First Amendment rights as a journalist.

8:01Michael Popok:He says on paragraph four of his lawsuit, Mrs. Trump and her unitary executive husband, a little troll there, along with their MAGA myrmidons, have made a practice of threatening those who speak against them with costly slap actions in order to silence their speech, to intimidate their critics, and to extract unjustified payments and North Korean style confessions and apologies. The threat letter at pages two to three lists some of those whom they have pressured into unjustified submission, a pattern of abuse. These threatened legal actions are designed to create a climate of fear in the nation so that people cannot freely and confidently exercise their First Amendment rights.

8:42Michael Popok:The threats are also intended to shut down legitimate inquiry into the Epstein matter, which the Trumps and their collaborators have at every turn sought to impede and suppress. Mr. Wolf is a journalist who's done his job diligently. And then he goes through, I thought this was a brilliant strategy, and I let Michael know it. He went through each and every one of the alleged defamation, repeated it, and then said why it can't support a defamation case. One, Melania Trump was very involved in the Epstein scandal. He says, well, that statement's taken out of context. What he actually said was the first lady has largely avoided the hot topic, But Trump biographer Michael Wolff suggests that she's acting behind the scenes.

9:27Michael Popok:And that is in clear context. It's not defamatory either. Statement two, First Lady Melania could be the missing link in President Trump's ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. She says this again is taken out. He said this again is taken out of context and it is fair and accurate. Three, Melania was very involved in Epstein's social circle. And that's how she met Trump. Again, he says it fails to give the full context of the Daily Beast article. And it says, among many other ties, Mrs. Trump was a model with ID models run by a friend of both Trump and Epstein. Mrs. Trump met Mr. Trump at the Kit Kat Club party.

10:11Michael Popok:The party was hosted by ID models and its owner. Statement four, she was introduced by a model agent, both of whom Trump and Epstein were involved with. She introduced Trump that way. Epstein knew her well. He says, that's true. Statement five, Epstein alleged that Trump liked to F his friends, wives, and first slept with Melania on his Lolita Express. He says, this statement is true, and so on and so on. Now, when you want to take a case, and I've been involved in 35 years of state and federal court practice, I've removed cases to federal court and I've opposed moves to federal court. You want to stay in state court for certain types of cases.

10:54Michael Popok:I would think this is a case that you'd like to have a state court jury. Federal court has different rules and procedures. This complaint may have to be amended to fit federal pleading requirements. So the court of choice for Michael Wolff is state. But if you're a legitimately out of state, somebody not from New York person, you have the right to try to get your case removed. But the other side has the right to put you down for a deposition or interrogatories and get to the bottom of whether you are or not a Florida resident. So there's been plenty reporting that they don't sleep in the same bedroom.

11:32Michael Popok:She's rarely gone to the White House in the first term. Certainly in the second term. She's non-existent except at state dinners. She mainly resides on Fifth Avenue to keep an eye on Barron, who's up at NYU down the street on Fifth Avenue in New York. She likes to go out there, party there, go out with her girlfriends for lunch there, go to spa day there, shop there. She's not shopping on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach every day. So she's going to have to sit down and answer hard questions. What's her tax return say? What have they reported on Barron Trump's application process? It's very invasive, but she's opened herself up to it.

12:14Michael Popok:Now let's talk about the judge. I mean, we'll see what happens. I mean, Trump always, he seems to have this luck, luck of the draw. It was random selection, but he got Mary Kay Viscoseal. She is a Trump-appointed judge in Manhattan, which is rare. She's also ruled in favor of the administration a number of times. She ruled in favor of the administration when Alvin Bragg moved to quash his subpoena, the Manhattan prosecutor, because he didn't want to give testimony to a congressional judiciary committee run by Jim Jordan for Donald Trump to try to get Donald Trump's prosecutor to answer questions in public about the prosecution.

12:52Michael Popok:And she denied the motion to quash the subpoena. She also was the first one to come out of the box and deny the ability of a school like Columbia University in New York to sue the Trump administration for getting its funding cut under Donald Trump's attack on public education, courtesy of Mary Kay Viscosil. So she has ruled consistently with Donald Trump from her perch of being a federal judge. And this is the judge that Melania got. But she's going to have to follow the rules. You know, how broad of a allowance she's going to give, how wide of a birth she's going to give to the lawyers for Michael Wolff to ask Melania questions about her residence.

13:34Michael Popok:Her residency will be left to be seen. But she has certainly, Melania, opened herself up to this. I'm going to continue to follow it all right here on Midas Touch and on Legal AF. Thanks for being such a supporter of Legal AF, the YouTube channel. We crossed well over 1 million subscriber base over the holidays. And on Legal AF Substack, we're number one and rising in all U.S. politics. And we're running a sale on our paid membership, 30 % off. But you got to join now. So until my next report, I'm Michael Popak.

14:20Michael Popok:called, wait for it, Morning AF. What else? All the other contributors from Legal AF are there as well. We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes. Where? Legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe.

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