The move brought an abrupt end to a lawsuit whose filing had prompted accusations that Trump administration officials were abusing their power to enact retribution.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has withdrawn a lawsuit it brought in October against a onetime friend and aide to Melania Trump over her book, one of several cases in which the Trump administration went after former allies who wrote critical memoirs.
The Biden administration requested on Monday to dismiss the case against the friend, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, which Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered. That brought to an abrupt end a lawsuit whose filing had prompted accusations that Trump administration officials were abusing their power over the machinery of federal law enforcement to enact retribution.
Ms. Wolkoff’s book, “Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady,” depicted the then-first lady as selfish and shallow. The book contains no classified information, but the Justice Department accused Ms. Wolkoff of violating a nondisclosure agreement.
A department official said its new leadership had evaluated the case and concluded that ending it was in the best interests of the United States based on the facts and the law.
“We are very pleased that the Department of Justice has dismissed this lawsuit,” Lorin L. Reisner, a lawyer for Ms. Wolkoff, said in a statement.
The Trump administration used the Justice Department to go after several onetime members of the Trump circle who wrote harsh tell-alls.
In 2018, the day after it became public that Mr. Trump’s former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman had written an unflattering book, the Trump White House asked the department to open an investigation into a paperwork dispute that led to a government lawsuit against her. Her lawyer filed a motion for summary judgment last week.
In June, the department asked a judge to issue an extraordinary order requiring Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser John R. Bolton pull his already printed memoir, which presents a negative account of Mr. Trump. The judge refused to grant that order but is still weighing the department’s request to seize Mr. Bolton’s $2 million advance in a dispute over the prepublication review process.
In July, a judge ruled that department officials had engaged in retaliation against Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, who was about to publish “Disloyal: A Memoir,” which portrays the president as a mafia-like figure. Mr. Cohen was serving a prison sentence at home because of the pandemic, but officials had ordered him returned to prison when he refused their demand that he sign an agreement not to publish the book.
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February 10, 2021 at 12:42AM
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The Justice Department dropped a Trump-era lawsuit over an ex-aide’s book about Melania Trump. - The New York Times
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