The formidable power of first lady Melania Trump has persuaded the author of a new book on Prince Andrew to remove portions that claimed she was introduced to President Donald Trump by serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The first lady’s legal team has been targeting notable people who have been spewing that falsehood.
The most famous has been former first son Hunter Biden, who was threatened with a $1 billion lawsuit after he repeated the claim on an episode of a podcast earlier this month.
The first lady’s attorney said in a letter to Biden that his comments, parroting Trump’s controversial biographer Michael Wolff, were ‘false, defamatory, disparaging and inflammatory.’
Now author Andrew Lownie has removed the Melania-Epstein connection from his book Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, which was released last week.
The Independent on Wednesday reported that future copies of the book will include the edits, after about 60,000 copies had already been published.
‘We can confirm that several passages from Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York by Andrew Lownie have been removed in consultation with the author,’ a HarperCollins UK spokesperson told the Independent. ‘Entitled is published in the UK by HarperCollins. In the US the book is self-published by Mr Lownie.’
Lownie did not immediately respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment.
While there are photos of Donald and Melania Trump together with Epstein, it’s long been reported that the first couple met in 1998 at a New York Fashion Week party and were introduced by modeling agent Paolo Zampolli.
More recently, as Trump’s White House has had to deal with the fallout for not delivering on a campaign promise to fully release the Epstein files, Wolff – who penned the controversial 2018 best-seller on the first Trump White House, Fire and Fury – has pushed the notion it was Epstein who introduced the Trumps.
Biden appeared on an August 5 episode of Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan and echoed Wolff’s claims.
‘They knew each other well, they spent an enormous amount of time together,’ Biden said of Donald Trump and Epstein. ‘According to his biographer, Jeffrey Epstein introduced Melania, that’s how Melania .. the first lady and the president met.’
In a letter addressed to Biden and his longtime lawyer Abbe Lowell, the first lady’s lawyer Alejandro Brito called Biden’s comments ‘false, defamatory, and lewd.’
‘Given your vast history of trading on the names of others-including your surname-for your personal benefit, it is obvious that you published these false and defamatory statements about Mrs. Trump to draw attention to yourself,’ Brito wrote in a letter, first obtained by Fox News.
So far the younger Biden has refused to apologize.
Mrs. Trump has successfully used litigation threats to eke apologies out of other prominent Democrats.
Earlier this month longtime Democratic strategist James Carville said at the top of his Politics War Room podcast that comments made about the first lady were incorrect.
‘We took a look at what they complained about, and we took down the video and edited out those comments from the episode,’ Carville said. ‘I also take back these statements and apologize.’