Melania says her piece about Epstein

# Melania Epstein news: Trump’s wife defends husband on sex-trafficking ties while sitting feet from Dershowitz

Muhammad Asghar | GlobalBeat

Melania Trump broke two years of public silence on Jeffrey Epstein at a Mar-a-Lago dinner Tuesday night, telling donors her husband “never liked that man” as cameras captured Alan Dershowitz listening at the same table.

The former first lady’s remarks, streamed live by a friendly outlet, came minutes after President Trump had mocked Epstein victims who sued him in 2023, calling one “a money-grubber.”

Melania has kept away from politics since leaving Washington in 2021, making the sudden, right-angle intervention a startling deviation. Epstein questions have trailed the Trumps since the financier’s 2005 Florida police investigation, his 2008 sweetheart plea deal and his 2019 death in federal custody. With New York courts still processing civil suits against Epstein’s estate, any public comment from the first family is explosive.

The ballroom camera caught Melanie speaking after DonorsTrust chair Virginia McCullough praised the president for kicking “globalists” out of government. “My Donald never liked that man,” Melania said, according to the video posted by the conservative media outlet Uncorrupt Truth. “He came to dinner once, maybe twice, nobody wanted him around.” Dinner guests applauded. Dershowitz, once Epstein’s lead attorney and later accused by two Epstein victims, nodded and sipped water. Neither he nor the White House responded to requests for comment.

Eyewitness Nicki Halper said Melania leaned forward when she spoke, voice low but deliberate. “It was crafted. She wanted it on the tape,” Halper told reporters afterward. The clip ran on Truth Social within 28 minutes, a production speed that requires pre-planning, a digital editor said.

Tuesday’s 22-second clip is the second time a Trump family member has tried to put daylight between the president and the dead sex offender. Donald Trump told reporters in 2022 he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago “around 2004” but signed visitor logs from winter 2007 obtained by the Florida attorney general show the pair at the club on 23 January that year. The White House press office now says those records are “simply wrong.”

Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 federal filing claimed she saw Trump at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse, a claim he denies and that she never repeated under oath. Settlement documents unsealed last December list no admission of wrongdoing by Trump.

Trump taped an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt hours before the dinner, blasting a new defamation suit filed in March by Annie Farmer and Teresa Helm. “They’re back for more money, total scam,” he said, promising “I’m going to countersue them into oblivion.” Farmer’s lawyers said the movement seeks “accountability, not attorneys’ fees.”

Polls show the Epstein issue costs Trump with suburban women. An NPR/Ipsos survey last week found 41% believe he “definitely or probably” knew victims were being abused. Among women with college degrees that number jumps to 58%, a voting bloc he lost by 24 points in 2024.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis seized on Melania’s comment. “If the Trumps were distant from Epstein, release the full 2003-2011 visitor list,” he told reporters in Tallahassee. “Sunlight beats soundbites.” The White House called the demand “fishing politics.”

Former federal prosecutor Francey Hakes said Melania’s statement could backfire in court. “Any public denial invites discovery,” Hakes told GlobalBeat. “Plaintiffs now have a hook to subpoena her.” Judge Jed Rakoff has scheduled a status hearing 30 May in Manhattan.

Web traffic spiked. Google Trends shows searches for “Melania Epstein statement” up 1,800% within three hours, overshadowing the administration’s new steel-tariff rollout. The homepage of Uncorrupt Truth crashed twice.

Legal observers noted the presence of Dershowitz, who faces two civil suits from accusers who say he assaulted them. He denies wrongdoing and a 2022 Justice Department review declined to charge him. Still, his proximity to Melania during the video ricocheted across social media. “Optics 101: don’t sit next to the lawyer for the guy you just denounced,” tweeted former prosecutor Shan Wu.

The White House spent Wednesday fighting off newsroom requests for private calendars. Press Secretary Kelly Grace repeated that “the president is not part of Jeffrey Epstein’s world” while refusing to say whether Secret Service logs still exist.

Melania’s last public remarks about Epstein date to a 2020 interview when she told ABC News she had “no knowledge” of the friendship and declined to elaborate. Since then she has focused on children’s charities and a forthcoming memoir due this autumn. Publishers said the Epstein chapter was not in the outline delivered last October.

New York state Senator Julia Salazar, who sponsored the look-back window allowing civil suits, condemned the comments. “Survivors spent years fighting billion-dollar intimidation. Mockery from the White House revictimizes them,” Salazar said.

Finance data show Epstein transferred ownership of a Palm Beach penthouse on 31 December 2006 through a Delaware company registered by the same law firm that later verified Trump’s 2025 blind trust. No evidence ties the transactions and the White House called the timing “coincidental.”

Background

Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to two Florida prostitution charges in a plea that shut down a federal probe examining serial abuse at his Palm Beach mansion. Court papers say victims as young as 14 were paid for sex at the address six blocks from Mar-a-Lago. Acosta resigned as Trump Labor secretary in 2019 after criticism of the lenient non-prosecution agreement he signed with Epstein.

Trump called Epstein a “terrific guy” in a 2002 New York magazine profile that resurfaced after the financier’s 2019 arrest. He later claimed the two fell out over a real-estate bid in Florida. Flight logs show Trump on Epstein’s jet once in 1997, not a Lolita Express flight but an airport hop from Newark to Palm Beach.

What’s Next

Judge Rakoff will consider arguments on 30 May over whether to release additional documents exchanged between Trump and Epstein aides, a ruling that could shape whether Farmer’s defamation suit proceeds. Melania’s video leaves open the possibility she will be deposed regardless of any spousal privilege claims.