First Lady Melania Trump has threatened to sue Hunter Biden for more than $1 billion after he said she had been introduced to her husband by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the BBC reported.

Her lawyers, acting on her behalf, described the claim as “false, defamatory, libelous and inflammatory.” Biden, the son of former president Joe Biden, made the comment in an interview earlier this month in which he sharply criticized Donald Trump’s past ties to Epstein. Trump had been friendly with the financier but says they fell out in the early 2000s after Epstein took employees from the spa at his Florida golf club.

In a letter to one of Hunter Biden’s lawyers, the First Lady demanded that he retract his words and apologize, otherwise a lawsuit seeking “more than $1 billion in damages” will follow. The letter says Melania has suffered “enormous financial and reputational harm” because of the repeated claim. It also accuses Biden of a “long-standing practice of using other people’s names” for personal gain.

In an interview with filmmaker Andrew Callaghan, Biden alleges that unpublished documents related to Epstein will “implicate” Donald Trump, and says: “Epstein introduced Melania to Trump — the connections are so deep and wide.” Part of the claim is attributed to journalist Michael Wolff, author of a critical biography of the president. In an interview with the Daily Beast, Wolff said the First Lady knew a mutual acquaintance of Epstein and Trump when she met her husband. After a letter from Melania’s lawyers, the publication retracted the article and apologized.

There is no evidence that Melania and Donald Trump were introduced by Epstein, who died by suicide in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial. The First Lady’s lawyers’ letter says Biden had relied on an article that had already been removed, described as “false and defamatory.”

Melania’s office said steps are being taken to obtain immediate retractions and apologies from all those who spread “malicious, defamatory lies.”

According to a Harper’s Bazaar profile from January 2016, Melania met Donald Trump in November 1998 at a party organized by the founder of a modeling agency. She refused to give him her phone number because he was “with a lady.” At the time, Trump had already separated from his second wife, Marla Maples, from whom he divorced in 1999, and his first marriage to Ivana Trump had been from 1977 to 1990.

The letter comes amid pressure on the White House to release the so-called “Epstein files” — unpublished documents from the investigation into the convicted pedophile. Before his re-election, Trump promised he would disclose them, but in July the FBI and the Department of Justice said there is no “incriminating” list of Epstein’s clients. |BGNES