Stephanie Winston Wolkoff says Melania Trump ‘stabbed her in the back’ after she ‘gave up everything’ for first lady
MELANIA Trump’s former best pal has said the first lady “stabbed her in the back” – just as her tell-all memoir on the Trump White House is set to be released.
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who worked as an unpaid aide in the East Wing of the White House until being let go in February 2018, says she “gave up everything” for Melania.
In Wolkoff’s book, Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady, she boasts she “had a front-row seat to the transformation of Donald Trump’s then-girlfriend [Melania] from a rough-cut gem to a precious diamond.”
When President Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, Wolkoff was brought on to help “produce” his inauguration, which reportedly led to her company making millions off the event.
Wolkoff told ABC News’ Good Morning America in an interview that aired on Monday that she “begged” Melania to make it publicly clear that she personally didn’t make close to $26million off the 2017 inauguration.
She said she also asked that Melania make clear the first lady had known about the costs going into the inauguration.
She said $26million was the total fee that was paid to a company Wolkoff created with two others to plan the event, and said $1.62million of that was paid to Wolkoff’s personal firm.
The former BFF to the first lady said that following “three months of work – 24 hours a day, seven days a week – working on the presidential inauguration,” she “made” $480,000
Wolkoff told ABC that “when the time came for her to come and speak the truth about a friend who left everything behind to help her, she turned her back on me … stabbed me in the back.”
She claims that White House officials told Melania not to speak out about Wolkoff because “there were going to be possible investigations into the presidential inauguration financing.”
Wolkoff said she’s “working with three different prosecutors, and it’s taken over my life,” as they investigate whether any financial crimes were committed in relation to the inauguration.
She said she began to question the inaugural committee’s expenses “when I saw that a tree you could buy for $10 was $1,000, or a stage that would cost $100,000 was $1million.”
“There were a lot of different people involved,” she said.
“It was amateur hour then, and it’s amateur hour now, and I think it’s really frightening for our country,” Wolkoff said.
“Everyone does need to know what … this presidency is doing and what this propaganda machine behind this man at the White House is doing,” she added.
Wolkoff’s book claims she has recordings of Melania slamming her husband and the first family, but on Monday, told ABC she was “not going to comment on whether there’s audio or not.”
However, she insisted: “I can back up everything that’s in the book 100 percent … and Donald and Melania know that.”
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Stephanie Grisham, Melania’s chief of staff, said Wolkoff’s book is “clearly based on some imagined need for revenge.”
“[She] builds herself up while belittling and blaming everyone she worked with, yet she still managed to play the victim,” Grisham said in a statement obtained by ABC.
Wolkoff’s book is set to be released on Tuesday.