A former friend and adviser to Melania Trump told ABC’s Good Morning America [1] that she’s working with prosecutors on investigations of possible financial crimes committed in connection with President Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration, The Hill [2] reports.
“I’m working with three different prosecutors, and it’s taken over my life,” said Stephanie Winston Wolkoff during an interview Monday. She was referring to the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York and two attorneys general in New Jersey and Washington, D.C.
Winston Wolkoff told ABC she and Melania were close friends for more than a decade. She worked as a leading organizer for the inauguration and later as an unpaid adviser to the first lady.
Winston Wolkoff appeared on the ABC program to promote her tell-all book Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady which is set for release on September 1. However, it’s been reported that she declined to provide ABC News with materials to back up the book or her interview. At one point, she was asked if she had audio tapes to back up the allegations in her book and she told ABC News “I can back up everything that’s in the book 100 percent.” The Hill reports that she didn’t say if she was in possession of the tapes to verify her allegations.
In the book, she notes she was turned into “the cover girl for the inauguration shenanigans,” ABC News reports. Winston Wolkoff has also said in the past that she was “thrown under the bus” by the Trump White House once the inaugural committee’s spending fell under scrutiny in 2018.
Unsurprisingly, Trump’s inaugural committee and others at the White House are dissing Winston Wolkoff’s book, and in a statement to ABC News, the committee said it “disagrees” with her “description of this historic event.” The committee didn’t respond to the allegations and added “it will decline to engage in her efforts to sell books.”
In response to the allegations, White House spokesperson Judd Deere told The Hill:
“This is just one more book among a long list that have sought to profit off of lies and mischaracterizations meant to harm the First Family. The President and his entire White House are focused on making our country stronger, safer, and more prosperous not some book that belongs in the fiction.”
This would be hilarious if it weren’t so fucking tragic. The entire Trump family belongs in the fiction section. Ask yourself, with the recent deadly protests where Trump’s thugs are killing people if the country is stronger and safer. Really. It’s too bad these fools don’t understand irony.
You can watch Winston Wolkoff’s interview below.