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US first lady Melania Trump has threatened to sue Hunter Biden for more than $1 billion (€860m) in damages over his claim that the disgraced financier and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein introduced her to her now husband.
The son of the former president made the comment in an interview with the British journalist Andrew Callaghan earlier this month.
In a letter to Biden’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, who represents the first lady, called the allegations false, defamatory and “extremely salacious”.
Brito, who suggested that the widely disseminated remarks had caused Trump “to suffer overwhelming financial and reputational harm”, demanded that Biden retract the claim and apologise, otherwise he would face legal action.
Abbe Lowell, the Biden lawyer to whom the letter was addressed, has yet to comment publicly on the threat.
In the sprawling interview in which he mentioned Epstein, Biden lashed out at the Trumps as well as the Democratic Party figures who he blamed for his father’s decision to pull out of last year’s presidential elections.
“Epstein introduced Melania to Trump. The connections are, like, so wide and deep,” Biden suggested in one of the disputed comments.
The president and first lady have long maintained that the modelling agent Paolo Zampolli introduced them at a New York Fashion Week party in 1998.
Epstein and the now president used to be friends, but fell out in the early 2000s.
The financier’s death in federal custody in 2019, which has given rise to conspiracy theories, is of keen interest to Trump supporters, who want all the files about the case to be released.
Earlier this year, the billionaire and former Trump ally Elon Musk suggested the president’s name was included in the documents.
Additional sources • AP