A longtime confidante to Melania Trump who helped to plan the inauguration of US President Donald Trump is reportedly set to release a book with “explosive” revelations based on her 15-year relationship with the first lady.
The Daily Beast said Stephanie Winston Wolkoff’s Melania and Me, scheduled for September 1, is “largely negative” and “heavily trashes the first lady.”
A blurb describing the book cited by Vanity Fairy says it will detail the friendship between the two through the years as well as her “abrupt and very public departure” from the White House.
The Daily Beast notes that Wolkoff signed a nondisclosure agreement, which could lead to legal action over the book.
Wolkoff worked as an unpaid senior advisor to the first lady for the first year of the presidency.
However, the White House cut ties to Wolkoff in early 2018 after revelations that her company was paid nearly $26 million by the inauguration committee to plan events related to the ceremony.
Wolkoff herself received $1.62 million, The New York Times reported in 2018. Committee officials told the newspaper that money to her and her firm was used to pay other vendors, subcontractors and workers.
Despite the dismissal, Wolkoff told the Times in 2018 that she expected “to remain a trusted source for advice and support on an informal basis.”
By last year, she seemed to have changed her tune.
“Was I fired? No,” Wolkoff said in the statement to the Times. “Did I personally receive $26 million or $1.6 million? No. Was I thrown under the bus? Yes.”
Her book would be the latest a long line of works by former Trump insiders who are now critical of the president. Last month, former national security advisor John Bolton released his White House tell-all. And next week, Mary Trump ― the president’s niece ― will be out with her own account of “the world’s most dangerous man.”
It will also be the second major release of the summer to focus on the first lady.
Last month’s The Art of Her Deal, by Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan, claimed that the first lady renegotiated her prenuptial agreement with the president in the early months of the presidency, when she did not immediately move to the White House.