Oct. 14 (UPI) — The Justice Department on Tuesday sued Melania Trump’s former adviser and friend, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, for allegedly violating a non-disclosure agreement when she wrote a tell-all book about the first lady.
The department said Wolkoff broke a confidentiality agreement by publishing the book — Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady — in September.
The complaint filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia asked a judge to order Wolkoff to surrender all profits she receives from the book.
Court documents indicate Wolkoff signed a gratuitous services agreement when she volunteered to be an adviser to Trump upon her husband assuming the presidency in January 2017. Under the agreement, she “promised to maintain strict confidentiality over ‘non-public, privileged and/or confidential information’ that she might obtain during her service,” the complaint says.
The lawsuit says Wolkoff never submitted a draft of the book to the first lady or other members of the White House legal team and never received permission to disclose the information contained in it.
Wolkoff was hired to organize President Donald Trump’s inauguration, and she later came under scrutiny for how much her events planning company made off the day.
Wolkoff told The View she worked with lawyers ahead of the book’s publishing to ensure she didn’t violating any NDAs.
“I’ve been working with First Amendment lawyers the entire time, pre-publishing lawyers, so this was handled extremely carefully,” she said.
