Melania Trump launches fiery attack on aide who leaked 'salacious' secret tapes

First lady calls her former friend an 'opportunist’ who ‘hardly knew me’ and 'clung to me’

Melania Trump has launched a fiery attack on her ex-aide Stephanie Winston Wolkoff over her tell-all book.

In a statement released by the White House, the first lady refers to Ms Wolkoff as a “former contractor” who “hardly knew me” and “clung to me” after Donald Trump won the presidency.

Ms Trump accuses her of releasing portions of secretly recorded conversations out of context, and of writing a book of “idle gossip” to distort her character.

“There are plenty of opportunists out there who only care about themselves, and unfortunately seek to self-aggrandise by knowingly taking advantage of my goodwill,” the first lady says.

Having been sick with Covid-19, she has used the last couple of weeks to reflect on personal matters, describing her time as first lady as one of the most honourable and important roles she has ever undertaken.

She reiterates that she has put her time and effort into her 'Be Best’ campaign to help children, but says that more often than not “information that could be helpful to children is lost in the noise of self-serving adults”.

Taking aim at the media, Ms Trump says major news outlets eagerly covered the salacious claims made by her former friend and “chose to focus their coverage on pettiness over my positive work”.

“I would remind the media that they have the choice of focusing on our next generation,” she says. “As a country, we cannot continue to get lost in the noise of negativity and encourage ambition by those who seek only to promote themselves.”

In addition to her book, Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady, Ms Wolkoff has released a number of recordings of phone conversations with the first lady in which she talks about Stormy Daniels, detention centres, and separated children at the border, among other topics.

The Department of Justice has since accused her of violating a non-disclosure agreement and is pushing for the profits from the book to be put into a government trust.

A suit, filed in US District Court in Washington, says the former adviser failed to submit her book for government review before its publication in September. 

“The United States seeks to hold Ms Wolkoff to her contractual and fiduciary obligations and to ensure that she is not unjustly enriched by her breach of the duties she freely assumed when she served as an adviser to the first lady,” the complaint reads. 

The former adviser denies doing anything that violated her agreement with the first lady.

“I’ve been working with First Amendment lawyers the entire time, pre-publishing lawyers, so this was handled extremely carefully,” the author told ABC’s The View in September. “I did not break the NDA.”