Melania Trump suspects Roger Stone, a longtime ally and adviser to Donald Trump, of being behind the release of nude photos from her modelling past, a new book claims.
In the book, Free, Melania, CNN correspondent Kate Bennett also writes that the first lady “still refuses to believe” her husband played a role in the release. Bennett also adds to reports that the president and first lady keep separate bedrooms at the White House.
In statements to the Guardian, Stone denied Bennett’s claim while the White House poured scorn on her book.
The pictures, from a 1996 photoshoot and published by a French magazine the following year, found their way into the New York Post on 30 July 2016, three months out from election day and as Donald Trump was embroiled in an ugly spat with the family of Capt Humayun Khan, a US
soldier killed in Iraq in 2004.
At the time, Stone had no formal role with the Trump campaign, having left it in August 2015. But he remained close to Trump, himself a past master in using his personal life to generate tabloid publicity, often as a means of distraction.
“The theory goes,” Bennett writes, “that Trump was trying to head off a bad week on the campaign.”
Friends say she still refuses to believe Trump would do that to her. As for Stone, she’s not so sure
Kate Bennett
Stone has had a bad month. In mid-November, he was found guilty of obstructing the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. He is now awaiting sentencing.
Trump heads into the 2020 election under the shadow of an impeachment inquiry related to his conduct in foreign policy. He also faces the prospect of prosecution when he leaves office, regarding a range of potential offences, among them pay-offs to a porn star and a Playboy
model who claim to have slept with him while he was married to Melania. He denies the affairs but the payments have been confirmed, and Trump allegedly played a direct role in them.
“This time,” Bennett writes of the release of the photos, “the idea that [Trump] would throw his naked wife under the bus was almost so gross and salacious, and the photos so B-movie bad, the press ultimately spent very little time discussing them.
