Melania Trump’s lawyers on Thursday sent a letter to People Magazine threatening to sue the publication and the writer who wrote a first-person account accusing Donald Trump of forcibly kissing her in 2005.
In the letter, Melania Trump’s lawyers take issue with one anecdote in the story in which People writer Natasha Stoynoff recalls running into Melania Trump on Fifth Avenue a few months after her encounter with Donald Trump.
! @people #NatashaStoynoff pic.twitter.com/zXNm6boveP
— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) October 13, 2016
Stoynoff wrote:
That winter, I actually bumped into Melania on Fifth Avenue, in front of Trump Tower as she walked into the building, carrying baby Barron.
“Natasha, why don’t we see you anymore?” she asked, giving me a hug.
I was quiet and smiled, telling her I’d missed her, and I squeezed little Barron’s foot.
Melania Trump’s lawyer, Charles Harder, wrote that these three sentences, “among others, are false and completely fictionalized.”
“We therefore demand that you immediately and permanently remove each of these statements from the Story, and print a prominent retraction and apology,” Harder wrote in the letter to Stoynoff and People’s editor-in-chief, Jess Cagle.
Harder said that Melania Trump and Stoynoff were never friendly.
“The true facts are these: Mrs. Trump did not encounter Ms. Stoynoff on the street, nor have any conversation with her. The two are not friends and were never friends or even friendly,” he wrote. “At the time in question, Mrs. Trump would not even have recognized Ms. Stoynoff if they had encountered one another on the street.”
In the piece, Stoynoff accused Donald Trump of forcibly kissing her in 2005 while she was interviewing him and Melania for a story on their first wedding anniversary. During a rally on Thursday, Trump denied that the incident took place and attacked Stoynoff, attempting to discredit her.
“Take a look. You take a look. Look at her. And look at her words,” he said at a rally in Florida. “And you tell me what you think. I don’t think so. I don’t think so.”
