Melania Trump files for sanctions against Michael Wolff

First Lady Melania Trump is seeking financial sanctions against author Michael Wolff and his attorney, escalating a legal dispute over Wolff's public comments linking her to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein. The motion, filed on July 20 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, asks Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil to order Wolff and his counsel to pay her attorneys' fees, litigation costs, and additional monetary penalties.

The sanctions request follows Judge Vyskocil's dismissal of a lawsuit filed by Wolff in May. In that preemptive suit, Wolff had sought court declarations that his statements about the First Lady were not defamatory and that any future lawsuit from her would violate New York's anti-SLAPP law. The judge dismissed the case, criticizing Wolff's legal strategy as "textbook bad-faith forum-shopping" and an "abuse of the Declaratory Judgment Act." She found he had improperly filed suit to secure a favorable ruling before Melania Trump had even initiated her own threatened defamation action.

In the new filing, Melania Trump's attorneys argue Wolff's lawsuit was never a legitimate legal dispute but instead served as a publicity and fundraising campaign....