A former senior aide to the current US First Lady is reportedly about to unveil an “explosive” memoir spanning her 15-year friendship with Melania Trump, writesVanity Fair.
The book by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who was appointed as an unpaid adviser to the first lady shortly after Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2016, will bear the title Melania and Me, and is set to be published by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, on 1 September.
Winston Wolkoff, a socialite who used to work for Vogue, hit the spotlight after her contribution to producing the Met Gala - an annual fundraiser for the benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York.
Coming out just a little more than two months before the November presidential election in the US, the book by Melania Trump’s former right hand will offer a detailed timeline of her “journey from their friendship that started in New York to [Winston Wolkoff’s] role as the First Lady’s trusted advisor to her abrupt and very public departure, to life after Washington”. according to the description cited by the magazine.
The tell-all memoir will reportedly detail Winston Wolkoff’s time “navigating the White House and East Wing”, where US first ladies have their offices, and is to claim the aide was instrumental in helping Melania Trump adjust to life in the White House after she arrived there from New York, while advising her on her “political portfolio”.
Fall from Grace
In February 2018 Winston Wolkoff was forced to leave her position, after reports claimed her firm had received $26 million in payments for funding celebration expenses at Donald Trump’s lavish inauguration in 2017 and related events.
Federal investigators launched a probe to see if the money had been misspent after the committee for funding the inaugural celebration in January 2017 raised a record amount of cash: $107 million, more than twice what Trump's predecessor Barack Obama raised in 2008, the Wall Street Journal revealed in December 2018.
At the time, Winston Wolkoff, the biggest recipient of the committee money, who ran the firm WIS Media Partners. claimed it had “retained a total of $1.62m” that was divided among staff.
Subsequently, the former aide disputed the notion that she was dismissed from her post, insisting she had been “thrown under the bus”.
After parting with Melania Trump, Winston Wolkoff had been quoted by the New York Times in 2017 as saying:
“I expect to remain a trusted source for advice and support on an informal basis.”
The newly-touted book of memoirs is to come out on the heels of two other Trump - related books, both also published by Simon & Schuster.
“Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man” was penned by Mary Trump, the daughter of the US president’s late brother Fred Trump Jr.
The Trump family has been fighting its release, with a lawsuit filed by the president’s younger brother, Robert Trump, asserting that it violates a non-disclosure agreement signed by Fred Trump Jr.’s daughter after the family split the inheritance in 2001.
John Robert Bolton, who served as national security adviser under President Donald Trump between 2018 and 2019, following his resignation wrote a best-selling book about his tenure, The Room Where It Happened, published in June 2020.
The White House slammed the book as spreading lies while also containing classified national security information.