Stephanie Winston Wilkoff, a former friend and adviser to First Lady Melania Trump who helped plan President Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2016, stated on Tuesday that the first lady had used private email accounts while in the White House.
“Melania and I both didn’t use White House emails,” Winston Wilkoff, who recently published a memoir titled “Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady,” told the Washington Post.
During the interview, Winston Wilkoff provided “what appeared to be extensive digital and physical archives of emails and emoji-laden texts” between her and Trump, in the Post’s words.
Private email servers the first lady had used while in the White House, according to Winston Wilkoff, included a Trump Organization email account and one using a MelaniaTrump.com domain.
In both her book and in interviews as part of her book tour, Winston Wilkoff alleges that Trump was involved in handling the inaugural committee’s expenditures, which are currently under federal and state investigation. Winston Wilkoff stated that she is assisting the investigators, which include the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, along with the attorneys general in New Jersey and Washington, D.C.
“I’m working with three different prosecutors, and it’s taken over my life,” she told ABC News in a pre-taped interview that aired on Tuesday.
D.C. Attorney General spokesperson Marrisa Geller confirmed to TPM that Winston Wilkoff “received and responded to a pre-suit subpoena from our office.”
Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s spokesperson, claimed that Winston Wilkoff’s allegations are false and “clearly based on some imagined need for revenge.”
