A federal judge dealt a blow to “journalist” Michael Wolff, tossing out the notorious fabulist and gossip monger’s lawsuit against First Lady Melania Trump.
On Friday in federal court in Manhattan, U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil rebuked the sleaze peddler over his suit filed last year in an attempt to prevent Mrs. Trump from suing him for $1 billion over defamatory allegations about her and Jeffrey Epstein, calling the suit a “contorted” effort and scolding that it’s “not how the federal courts work.”
Judge tosses Michael Wolff’s lawsuit against Melania Trump, calls it ‘contorted’ and not how ‘courts work’ https://t.co/I4I88M1pAJ pic.twitter.com/vGfHxr6c3N
— New York Post (@nypost) May 23, 2026
While Vyskocil, who was appointed by President Donald J. Trump, acknowledged that the two sides have a “real dispute,” they are engaging in an “inappropriate level of tactical gamesmanship.”
The judge said she wasn’t going to be “conscripted to oversee an abusively presented spat.” She said that “they must litigate it according to the same procedures as everyone else.”
The first lady demanded that Wolff retract statements made about her alleged relationship to the deceased pedophile and sex trafficker, who was found dead in his cell in a high-security federal prison in August 2019, but whose specter continues to hover over her husband, President Donald J. Trump.
Mrs. Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito, put the author on notice that she would be “left with no alternative” but to sue him unless he retracted statements that would cause his client to suffer “overwhelming reputational and financial harm.”
In an effort to protect himself from the lawsuit, Wolff sued Mrs. Trump in October in state court, which Brito had transferred to federal court that had jurisdiction, but Vyskocil declined to exercise it, and “dismisses this case to be litigated like any other.”
“There are many features of this case that make it complicated: the prominence of the personalities involved, the scandalizing content of the underlying statements, and, frankly, an inappropriate level of tactical gamesmanship,” Vyskocil wrote in her 45-page opinion. “But the outcome is simple. The Court will not be conscripted to oversee an abusively presented spat and so declines to reach the merits here.”
In the suit, Wolff argued that the Trump family “have made a practice of threatening those who speak against them” with lawsuits “to silence their speech, to intimidate their critics generally, and to extract unjustified payments and North Korean style confessions and apologies.”
Last July, the leftist Daily Beast retracted its article “Melania Trump ‘Very Involved’ in Epstein Scandal: Author,” which was based on an interview with Wolff, who has penned four books about Trump, cashing in on the TDS gold rush.
🚨 BREAKING: The Daily Beast has RETRACTED their story attempting to link Trump to Epstein via Melania
They decided they didn’t want to be BANKRUPTED by President Trump 🤣
Daily Beast tried to claim Donald Trump met Melania through an Epstein-connected modeling agent
FALSE… pic.twitter.com/KQcC4fcaSd
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) August 1, 2025
“The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today. The individuals lying about me are devoid of ethical standards, humility and respect,” Mrs. Trump said in surprise remarks from the White House last month. “I do not object to their ignorance, but rather I reject their mean-spirited attempts to defame my reputation.”
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