An inadvertent text message sent by Boris Epshteyn, a personal attorney to President Donald Trump, alerted author Michael Wolff months ahead of time that First Lady Melania Trump intended to pursue sanctions against him in their ongoing legal battle.
Wolff, 72, disclosed on the “Inside Trump’s Head” podcast that Epshteyn mistakenly sent him a message on Jan. 26, 2026, asking: “Hey team, what’s our timing on the Section 11 filing?” Speaking with co-host Joanna Coles, Wolff explained that his phone number remained in the lawyer’s contacts from earlier off-the-record exchanges, and that the errant text demonstrated the legal effort against him was being coordinated at the top tier of the Trump legal apparatus.
Judge Raises Doubts About Sanctions Effort
Despite securing dismissal of Wolff’s lawsuit in May, Melania Trump’s legal team has continued pressing for penalties against the author, citing what they characterize as “factual misrepresentations, frivolous legal arguments and bad-faith conduct.” They argue Wolff should face sanctions substantial enough to discourage similar behavior in the future and cover her attorney fees.
District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, a Federalist Society member appointed to New York’s Southern District by Trump during his first term, threw out Wolff’s case after ruling he had tried to litigate a conflict before any actual lawsuit had been filed against him. Wolff has appealed that decision to the Second Circuit.
Yet on July 1, Vyskocil herself questioned whether continuing the fight in her courtroom served the parties’ interests. She cautioned Melania’s attorneys that a Rule 11 sanctions motion — the legal mechanism Epshteyn referenced as “Section 11” in his text — imposes a rigorous standard, and observed that litigants sometimes fail to weigh whether pursuing such a motion is worth the expense relative to the probable result. Her legal team signaled they plan to move forward regardless.
“Essentially, they are moving to sanction my lawyers for doing nothing more than bringing the lawsuit against Melania Trump,” Wolff said on the podcast. “So this is preposterous on its face.”
Origins of the Billion-Dollar Dispute
The conflict began in October 2025, when Melania Trump threatened a $1 billion lawsuit against Wolff over assertions he published linking her to late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Among the claims were suggestions that Melania might have encountered Donald Trump through Epstein’s social network, and that the president first had sexual relations with Melania on Epstein’s private aircraft. Wolff responded by filing suit under anti-Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation statutes — legal protections created to guard journalists and others against litigation aimed more at stifling speech than securing legitimate redress.
Wolff characterized the sanctions effort as a delay-and-drain strategy, contending it exemplifies a wider trend in which Trump-aligned litigants file aggressive motions chiefly to deplete adversaries’ resources rather than win on substance.
A Career Built on Trump Scrutiny
Wolff has authored four books examining the president and his administrations: “Fire and Fury,” “Siege,” “Landslide,” and “All or Nothing.”
When excerpts from “Fire and Fury,” his first Trump book, emerged on Jan. 4, 2018, the resulting uproar prompted Trump to send in lawyers and the White House to dismiss the work as tabloid nonsense.
Skeptics of Wolff’s journalism have repeatedly highlighted contradictions in his accounts. In the introduction to “Fire and Fury,” Wolff conceded that many narratives in the book contradict each other and that some might ultimately be shown to be false — though he stated he chose the versions he considered accurate. Those qualifications have not dampened the legal and political storms surrounding his Trump reporting.
The Path Ahead
With Vyskocil’s reservations now documented, Melania’s sanctions campaign confronts a challenging road — courts seldom grant Rule 11 sanctions absent persuasive evidence of intentional bad faith, precisely the threshold the judge emphasized.
