ISTANBUL

Journalist and author Michael Wolff filed a lawsuit against US first lady Melania Trump, accusing her of attempting to silence him with a $1 billion legal threat tied to his reporting on her alleged connections to Jeffrey Epstein, NBC reported.

The complaint, filed Tuesday in the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan, claims the first lady’s lawyers threatened Wolff with a massive defamation suit in an effort to intimidate him and suppress his reporting. Wolff argues the threat was “intended to harass, punish, and chill his right to free speech.”

The dispute stems from comments Wolff made to The Daily Beast, in which he allegedly linked the first lady to Epstein, the convicted sex offender who officials said died by suicide in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. Epstein had previously been associated with Donald Trump in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito, sent Wolff a letter last week demanding a public retraction, an apology, and “a monetary proposal to Mrs. Trump to ameliorate the harm that you have caused.” The letter warned Wolff could face a $1 billion lawsuit if he failed to comply.

The Daily Beast retracted the story, titled “Melania Trump ‘Very Involved’ in Epstein Scandal: Author,” and removed it from its website. It said in an editor’s note that the piece “did not meet our standards.”

Melania Trump’s office responded Wednesday, saying she “is proud to continue standing up to those who spread malicious and defamatory falsehoods as they desperately try to get undeserved attention and money from their unlawful conduct.”

Wolff, best known for his 2018 best-seller, Fire and Fury, about Donald Trump’s White House, said his remarks were taken out of context and he never defamed the first lady. His suit contends that Trump’s legal team is trying to block his investigation into Epstein, which he said includes “many hours of interviews” conducted over several years.

“The threats are 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,” the filing states.

In a video Wednesday posted to Instagram, Wolff said he looks forward to pursuing discovery in the case.

“To be perfectly honest, I’d like nothing better than to get Donald Trump and Melania Trump under oath in front of a court reporter and actually find out all of the details of their relationship with Epstein,” he said.