{"id":82038,"date":"2026-04-09T18:39:44","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T22:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/?p=82038"},"modified":"2026-04-09T18:39:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T22:39:44","slug":"first-lady-in-surprise-epstein-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/first-lady-in-surprise-epstein-statement\/","title":{"rendered":"First Lady In Surprise Epstein Statement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>From AP:<\/em><\/p>\n<p>First Lady <span class=\"LinkEnhancement\"><a class=\"Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/melania-trump\" data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\">Melania Trump<\/a><\/span>\u00a0is denying ties to\u00a0<span class=\"LinkEnhancement\"><a class=\"Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/jeffrey-epstein\" data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\">Jeffrey Epstein<\/a><\/span> and knowledge of his sex crimes, saying Thursday that the \u201cstories are completely false\u201d and calling accusations that she was somehow involved \u201csmears about me.\u201d\u00a0Reading an extraordinary statement at the White House, Melania Trump said she and her attorneys were fighting back against \u201cunfound and baseless lies\u201d in regards to her connections to the late financier, a convicted sex offender who leveraged connections to the rich, powerful and famous to recruit his victims and cover up his crimes.<\/p>\n<p>The seemingly out-of-the-blue message came as her husband, President\u00a0<span class=\"LinkEnhancement\"><a class=\"Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/donald-trump\" data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\">Donald Trump<\/a><\/span>, and his administration had finally seemed to move past more than a year of controversy surrounding Epstein, especially as the Iran war had become all-consuming in Washington. The first lady\u2019s comments almost assuredly served to push the story back into the political spotlight even as the president urged the public and media to move on from the case.<\/p>\n<div class=\"gsp_post_data\" \r\n\t            data-post_type=\"post\" \r\n\t            data-cat=\"news\" \r\n\t            data-modified=\"120\"\r\n\t            data-created=\"1775759984\"\r\n\t            data-title=\"First Lady In Surprise Epstein Statement\" \r\n\t            data-home=\"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From AP: First Lady Melania Trump\u00a0is denying ties to\u00a0Jeffrey Epstein and knowledge of his sex crimes, saying Thursday that the.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-82038","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-news","7":"entry"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}