Melania Trump has been taped trashing her husband
Donald Trump and his adult children, it was claimed Monday.
The first lady's former friend and staffer Stephanie Winston Wolkoff will claim in her forthcoming book that she had tapes of Melania Trump making disparaging remarks about the Trump family members, according to
media reporter Yashar Ali.
He did not have details of the statements Melania Trump allegedly made but noted they will be in Wolkoff's book 'Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady,' which will be released on September 1.
He added that Wolkoff taped the first lady without her knowledge. The claim closely parallels tapes published Saturday of Trump's sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, calling the president a liar and saying: 'Holy s***!'
Ali tweeted: 'In her book, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff quotes the First Lady making disparaging remarks about Ivanka Trump and some of the president's other adult children. She even makes some negative remarks about her husband, President Trump.'
Melania's White House office has yet to respond to the claim that she was taped.
Melania's toughest words were reported to be about Ivanka Trump, her elder step daughter with whom she's been reported to have a tense relationship.
Wolkoff told the New York Times last year she wasn't fired - but she was thrown under the bus.
'Was I fired? No,' Wolkoff said in a statement to
The Times. 'Did I personally receive $26 million or $1.6 million? No. Was I thrown under the bus? Yes.'
The Southern District of Manhattan is investigating the inaugural committee's spending and fundraising. Wolkoff was reported to be working with prosecutors.
Wolkoff was Melania Trump's first hire for the East Wing.
Before she took over her inaugural event planning role, she worked as a special events planner for Vogue, helped stage the Met Gala, and was a fashion director for Lincoln Center. She is a longtime friend of Melania's.
In December, it was revealed federal prosecutors in New York were investigating whether President
Trump's 2017 inaugural committee misspent some of the $107 million it raised.
The investigation came partly out of materials seized in the federal probe of Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen's business dealings.
In April raids of Cohen's home, office and hotel room, federal agents obtained a recorded conversation between Cohen and Wolkoff.
Wolkoff, in their conversation, expressed concern about how the inaugural committee was spending its money.
It's unknown when the conversation between Wolkoff and Cohen took place or why it was recorded.
Trump's inaugural committee raised more than double what former President Barack Obama's first inaugural committee did.
Supporters said the event was so costly because no one expected him to win so all the planning was done at the last minute.
But investigators are looking into whether some of the top donors to Trump's crowning event gave money in exchange for access to his administration, policy concessions or to influence the administration.
Money in exchange for political favors could violate federal corruption laws. There could also be a violation of federal law if funds were diverted from the inaugural committee, which was registered as a nonprofit.
The revelation about Melania tapes also comes after
The Washington Post revealed tapes of Maryanne Trump Barry, the president's sister, speaking harshly about him.
The tapes serve as confirmation of claims made by Mary Trump in her memoir 'Too Much and Never Enough' where she claims the president paid someone to take his SATs.
In the shock recording, Maryanne says she did his homework for him and 'drove him around New York City to try to get him into college' before she named Joe Shapiro as the man who took his exams.
Trump hit back after the recordings surfaced Saturday night saying 'who cares', that he misses his brother Robert who he held a funeral service for yesterday and insisting the 'country will soon be stronger than ever before.'
Maryanne made the shocking comments in phone calls back in 2018 and 2019 with estranged niece Mary, who secretly recorded the conversations and has since parted ways with the Trump clan following the release of her spill-all book.
The release of the scathing audio from one of Trump's nearest and dearest comes at a critical time for the president in the run-up to the November election, when his response to the coronavirus pandemic and ongoing civil rights movement have pushed many voters to question his competence.
It casts alarming doubts of his own family's confidence in his capabilities as leader of the United States, particularly given that Maryanne - and none of the rest of the Trump siblings - has never publicly criticized her younger brother or any of his White House policies before now.
Their release also comes one day after Trump held a funeral service at the White House for his and Maryanne's brother Robert who died last week aged 71 - a service Maryanne was absent from.
Mary Trump released the never before seen and heard transcripts and audio excerpts to the Post, revealing they came from 15 hours of secretly recorded conversations with her aunt back in 2018 and 2019.
In one of the audio clips, Maryanne accuses her brother of having 'no principles' and simply making political moves to 'appeal to his base'.
Maryanne brands him 'cruel' and phony: 'It's the phoniness of it all. It's the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel.'
