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By DPA 
4h ago
Los Angeles – In 2016, there were Access Hollywood headband. Barring an unforeseen release outside of Russia, this year’s October surprise may be less exciting: the so-called Melania tapes.
A month before the 2016 presidential election, The Washington Post published a video in which then-candidate Donald Trump bragged about the sexual assault on television host Billy Bush.
Now, two months before the 2020 presidential election, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former trusted advisor to Melania Trump and author of Melania and I: the rise and fall of my friendship with the first lady, appears to have recorded conversations with the first lady.
The third in a series of Melania’s explainers, following Free, melania in December and The art of your deal in June – Melania and me he recounts the (old) close friendship between the author and the first lady with almost alarming precision, using direct quotes, brackets and all, to back up his narrative.
“Melania and the White House had accused me of criminal activity, publicly embarrassed and fired me, and made me their scapegoat,” Winston Wolkoff told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “At that point, that’s when I hit record.”
The author’s conversation with the TV host came after Melania Trump’s chief of staff and spokesperson, Stephanie Grisham, told The New York Times that “anyone who secretly tapes their self-described best friend is, by definition , dishonest. “
Winston Wolkoff, however, changed the script: he alleged dishonesty in the use of funds from the Presidential Inauguration Committee and kept the receipts.
For example, on December 10, 2016, 41 days before the opening, the author learned by email that using the Trump International Hotel as a venue for eight days would cost $ 3.6 million.
“That figure could not be correct,” he writes. “Surely there is a mistake here. Wouldn’t Donald be donating the space or charging a large discount? … The amount seemed to be four times the standard price. Besides the problematic optics, it seemed ethically wrong.”
The optics didn’t seem to hurt much, but the ethical issues didn’t go away.
In August 2018, political consultant W. Samuel Patten pleaded guilty to one count of failing to register as a foreign agent when he illegally funneled foreign funds to the inauguration committee.
In February 2019, the US attorney’s office in New York subpoenaed Trump’s inaugural committee in connection with multiple allegations, including conspiracy to defraud the US government.
That same month, the attorneys general of New Jersey and DC summoned the committee to present documents related to their finances.
For years, Winston Wolkoff was unable to speak about the inaugural committee’s allegations of wrongdoing, even as his name was dragged through the mud. She was “gagged with an NDA,” a nondisclosure agreement, she writes in the book, which made her the perfect administration scapegoat.
Why show up now?
The simple answer: now you can. Since his stint on the east wing, Winston Wolkoff has fully cooperated with three separate subpoenas. With so much now on the public record, he was free to speak his truth.
Since February 2018, when The New York Times ran an article under the headline, “Trump’s Inaugural Committee Paid $ 26 Million to Friend of the First Lady” (updated since), that friend has been on a quest to clean up. your name.
“They didn’t pay me $ 26 million,” he writes in the book. “I was not part of the approval process and did not have access to funding, not even” for his firm, WIS Media Partners. Most of the WIS budget, he writes, was transferred to Inaugural Productions for the concert and dances. “All budgets were pre-approved and authorized by Tom (Barrack), Rick (Gates), Sara (Armstrong) and the PIC Finance Committee.”
At Paul Manafort’s trial in August 2018, former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates would admit it was “possible” that he had stolen money from the inauguration funds.
“For the record,” writes Winston Wolkoff, “my personal compensation for my work at the grand opening that I retained was $ 480,000. That number may sound like a lot. It’s a lot.
“But to put it in perspective, imagine we were making a $ 107 million movie. Producers’ fees are typically 5 percent, and sometimes they go up to 10 percent. My fee was less than half of 1 percent “.
The $ 107 million cost of the event, which unlike a movie was not a for-profit venture, was $ 50 million higher than any previous opening. It was also produced by Mark Burnett, creator of The newbieme.
Melania and me alleges that Winston Wolkoff was gladly thrown under the bus; In connection with the “suspicious inaugural accounting,” the Trumps and their administration decided to release the name of a sole senior adviser to the media. The resulting book is about the separation of a job and a friendship.
Winston Wolkoff met Melania in 2003, when she was a model named Melania Knauss. At the time, Winston Wolkoff was working as a special events director for Vogue, the force behind the Met Gala.
It was at the 2004 Met Gala that Trump proposed to Melania.
“I was there at the beginning,” writes Winston Wolkoff. “I witnessed the transformation of Melania from gold plate to 24 karat gold. I thought I had the heart to match.”
Now, she is not sure. “During our early friendship, she lived up to what I saw in her,” writes Winston Wolkoff. “Looking at her now, and seeing that only the gold shell remains, I wonder if that’s all she was, and I was the fool who bought the fake watch on the corner.”
One of the revelations that changed her perspective, and that the media is now talking about, was evidence, according to the author, that one emotion was genuine: the first lady’s indifference towards family separation at the United States border.
Melania’s decision to visit child detention centers wearing a Zara jacket that read, “I don’t really care. Right?” They raised their eyebrows and sparked protests, even when some believed it might be a misunderstanding.
A few days later, the first lady and the author shared a phone call that, it seems, given the timestamp and direct dating, was recorded by Winston Wolkoff.
“Mothers teach their children to say: ‘The gangs are going to kill me!’ so they’re allowed to stay, “Melania said.” They’re using that line and it’s not true. They don’t want to stay in Mexico because Mexico doesn’t take care of them the same as the United States. “
“His comments made me dizzy,” writes Winston Wolkoff.
But again, as he concludes in the last chapter, “A Trump is a Trump is a Trump.”
tca / dpa
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