Trump told Melania to ‘go forward' with legal action against Hunter Biden over Epstein relationship comments
'You know, I've done pretty well on these lawsuits lately. And I said, go forward. Jeffrey Epstein has nothing to do with Melania and I introducing. But they do that. They make up stories,' he told Brian Kilmeade on Fox News radio.
The legal threat centers on a claim Biden made in an interview on YouTube about the Trumps' relationship to Jeffrey Epstein, according to the journalist who conducted the interview and a copy of the attorney letter obtained by Fox News.
Andrew Callaghan, host of the YouTube series Channel 5, said on his channel that he had received a legal demand from the first lady asking to retract a video from last week, which currently has 1.3 million views. Melania Trump is seeking $1 billion in damages if they don't take down the video. She also wants a formal apology from Hunter Biden.
'In my hand is a legal demand letter addressed to Mr. Hunter Biden from the first lady of the United States, demanding a retraction of Channel 5's video called 'Hunter Biden returns' in which Mr. Biden here makes some speculative comments about the relationship between Jeffrey Epstein, Melania Trump and Donald Trump,' Callaghan said at the beginning of a follow-up interview with Biden posted on Thursday.
Fox News also posted a copy of a letter, addressed to Hunter Biden and his lawyer, that asked Biden to 'retract the false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements made about Mrs. Trump' during the YouTube interview.
'First Lady Melania Trump's attorneys are actively ensuring immediate retractions and apologies by those who spread malicious, defamatory falsehoods. The true account of how the First Lady met President Trump is in her best-selling book, 'Melania,'' her spokesperson Nick Clemens said in a statement when asked about the letter.
Hunter had a defiant response to the request for an apology telling Callaghan in another video interview posted on August 14, 'F**k that. That's not gonna happen.'
The legal demands center on an August 5 video of Callaghan's show, in which Hunter Biden spoke about the Trumps' relationship with Epstein, citing Michael Wolff.
In Callaghan's latest interview with Hunter Biden, the two discuss the legal demand from the first lady, and Biden suggests it could result in the president and first lady clarifying their relationship with Jeffrey Epstein in a deposition.
'I have this to say to them: If they want to sit down for a deposition and clarify the nature of the relationship between Jeffrey Epstein — if the president and the first lady want to do that and all the known associates around them at the time, whatever time that they met, I'm more than happy to provide them the platform to be able to do it,' Biden said in the interview released on Thursday.
'Fact of the matter is that, you know, I don't think that these threats of a lawsuit add up to anything other than a design distraction, because it's not about who introduced whom to whom. I don't know how that in any way rises to the level of defamation to begin with,' Biden added.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
34 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The US plans to build a $750M fly factory in Texas to stop a flesh-eating cattle parasite
The U.S. plans to build a $750 million factory in southern Texas to breed billions of sterile flies, ramping up its efforts to keep flesh-eating maggots in Mexico from crossing the border and damaging the American cattle industry. Secretary Brooke Rollins announced Friday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture hopes to be producing and releasing sterile male New World screwworm flies into the wild within a year from the new factory on Moore Air Base outside Edinburg, Texas, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the border. She also said the USDA plans to deploy $100 million in technology, such as fly traps and lures, and step up border patrols by 'tick riders' mounted on horseback and train dogs to sniff out the parasite. In addition, Rollins said the U.S. border will remain closed to cattle, horse and bison imports from Mexico until the U.S. sees that the pest is being pushed back south toward Panama, where the fly had been contained through late last year through the breeding of sterile flies there. The U.S. has closed its border to those imports three times in the past eight months, the last in July, following a report of an infestation about 370 miles (595 kilometers) from the Texas border. American officials worry that if the fly reaches Texas, its flesh-eating maggots could cause billions of dollars in economic losses and cause already record retail beef prices to rise even more, fueling greater inflation. The parasite also can infest wildlife, household pets and, occasionally, humans. 'Farm security is national security,' Rollins said during a news conference at the Texas State Capitol in Austin with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. 'All Americans should be concerned. But it's certainly Texas and our border and livestock producing states that are on the front lines of this every day.' The pest was a problem for the American cattle industry for decades until the U.S. largely eradicated it in the 1970s by breeding and releasing sterile male flies to breed with wild females. It shut down fly factories on U.S. soil afterward. The Mexican cattle industry has been hit hard by infestations and the U.S. closing its border to imports. Mexico's Agriculture ministry said in a statement Friday that Mexico Agriculture and Rural Development Secretary Julio Berdegué Sacristán and Rollins signed a screwworm control action plan. It includes monitoring with fly-attracting traps and establishing that livestock can only be moved within Mexico through government-certified corrals, the statement said. And on the X social media platform, Berdegué said, 'We will continue with conversations that lead to actions that will permit the reopening of livestock exports." The new fly-breeding factory in Texas would be the first on U.S. soil in decades and represents a ramping up of the USDA's spending on breeding and releasing sterile New World screwworm flies. The sterile males are released in large enough numbers that wild females can't help but mate with them, producing sterile eggs that don't hatch. Eventually, the wild fly population shrinks away because females mate only once in their weekslong lives. In June, Rollins announced a plan to convert an existing factory for breeding fruit flies into one for breeding sterile New World Screwworm flies, as well as a plan to build a site, also on the air base near Edinburg, for gathering flies imported from Panama and releasing them from small aircraft. Those projects are expected to cost a total of $29.5 million. The Panama fly factory can breed up to 117 million flies a week, and the new Mexican fly factory is expected to produce up to 100 million more a week. Rollins said the new Texas factory would produce up to 300 million a week. She said President Donald Trump's administration wants to end the U.S. reliance on fly breeding in Mexico and Panama. 'It's a tactical move that ensures we are prepared and not just reactive, which is today what we have really been working through,' Rollins said. ___ Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas. Associated Press writer Fabiola Sánchez in Mexico City contributed reporting. Solve the daily Crossword
New York Times
42 minutes ago
- New York Times
How to Keep Up With President Trump
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. Erica L. Green entered Baltimore's foster care system when she was 7 years old. By the time she entered college, she had lived in six homes. From that experience, she learned how to navigate a diverse set of family structures and households. 'I'm extremely vigilant and extremely adaptable,' said Ms. Green, who credits those traits as essential to her job covering President Trump for The New York Times. 'I grew up that way. You go where the news takes you, and that means, especially under Trump, it could be in 10 different directions.' Ms. Green joined The Times in 2017, reporting on federal education policy. She saw the job as an opportunity to shine a light on an issue important to her — America's flawed education system — on a large scale. In 2023, she accepted a role as a White House correspondent. Soon after, she began reporting on the Biden administration and eventually Kamala Harris's 2024 presidential campaign. She's now covering the Trump administration, with much of her coverage focusing on how the president is attempting to roll back civil rights and change racial dynamics in the United States. 'It has become incredibly clear how important it is for people to see a Black White House reporter for The New York Times,' she said. In a recent interview, Ms. Green spoke about the day-to-day demands of the job and the challenges that come with the beat. This interview has been condensed and edited. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
42 minutes ago
- New York Times
A Modern Shout-Out to the Old ‘Gray Lady'
In the In Times Past column, David W. Dunlap explores New York Times history through artifacts housed in the Museum at The Times. Early in the first Trump administration, the White House sought to punish news organizations it didn't like, including The New York Times, by barring their reporters from daily press briefings. 'FAKE NEWS media knowingly doesn't tell the truth,' President Trump wrote on Twitter (now X) on Feb. 24, 2017. 'A great danger to our country. The failing @nytimes has become a joke. Likewise @CNN. Sad!' Journalists were not alone in protesting such official antagonism. Two days later, an ad hoc group of New Yorkers staged a demonstration in favor of press freedom. Their march through Midtown Manhattan began and ended at The Times's headquarters, 620 Eighth Avenue. Barbara Malmet, an artist and political activist, stenciled the cardboard placard she carried at the demonstration: 'The Gray Lady Abides.' She used a nickname for The Times going back many decades to an era when the newspaper's front page was a gray mass of type, unbroken by images. The Times was also a 'gray lady' in its circumspection, when contrasted with the sensational 'yellow' journals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ms. Malmet's message — along with signs like 'The Free Press Protects Us' and 'There Is No Freedom Without a Free Press' — heartened those who worked inside The Times's headquarters. Dean Baquet, the executive editor at the time, told Sarah Maslin Nir, the Times reporter who covered the event: 'I don't look at us as the enemy of the White House. I look at us as people who are aggressively covering the White House.' After the demonstration, Ms. Malmet gave her placard to Ms. Nir. In turn, Ms. Nir lent it indefinitely to the Museum at The Times. The placard is exhibited next to a photo by a freelancer, Jeff Bachner, of the small crowd huddled outside The Times on a wintry day.
