Former Melania adviser slams Trumps for keeping employees 'silent for far too long'
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, ex-senior adviser to Melania Trump, discussed her relationship with the former first lady in her 2020 book "Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady." Now, she is speaking out about another Trump family-related matter: a lawsuit involving a former employee of one of Donald Trump's properties.
In a the lawsuit — which was filed on Wednesday, November 29 — Alice Bianco alleges that she was sexually harassed while working at the Trump National Gold Club in New Jersey and illegally tricked into signing a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) by Trump lawyer Alina Habba. Bianco, according to Newsweek's Kate Plummer, alleges that she was sexually harassed by a supervisor named Pavel Melichar.
However, Melichar isn't named as a defendant in the lawsuit, which specifically attacks the use of NDAs in Trump family-owned businesses. Nor is Melania Trump named in the lawsuit, which has also been reported by Politico and NBC News.
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Plummer reports that the lawsuit alleges that "when (Bianco) hired a lawyer…. Habba, a member of the club, allegedly approached Bianco and encouraged her to fire her lawyer, before persuading her to sign an NDA that included a penalty of $1000 a day if she violated it, in exchange for what the lawsuit described as a 'paltry sum.' The lawsuit doesn't say how much that was.
Bianco's lawsuit, according to Plummer, alleges that Habba told Bianco, "You don't want to go public with this."
"The suit seeks to stop the golf club from enforcing the NDA, as well as to allow Bianco to keep the settlement money, pay her legal fees, and refer Habba to the New Jersey Office of Attorney Ethics over 'unethical behavior,'" Plummer reports. "The NDA is illegal under New Jersey law, which has barred such agreements since 2019, the suit says."
On November 30, Wolkoff tweeted NBC News' coverage of the lawsuit and wrote, "The Trumps use of NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENTS (NDA’s) have kept too many SILENT for far too long."
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Read NBC News' full coverage of the lawsuit at this link and Newsweek's reporting here.
