On July 7th The Daily Beast reported Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who played a key role in planning the 2017 inauguration and is now assisting a federal probe into it, would release Melania & Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady. At the time, a person with knowledge of the matter said that First Lady Trump’s one-time confidante had signed a nondisclosure agreement for her duties on President Donald Trump’s inauguration, as well as for her time serving as a senior adviser to Melania Trump at the dawn of the new administration…

Legal threats sent by Trump’s outside counsel, including from the likes of Kasowitz and celebrity lawyer Charles Harder, to the president and his inner circle’s political and personal enemies is nothing new. In fact, in the Trump era, it’s become routine. However, when it came to Wolkoff’s juicy “tell-all” book, the matter went far beyond Donald or Melania’s personal attorneys. William Barr’s DOJ got directly involved, as well.

On July 15th, the Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Division at the Department of Justice, Ethan P. Davis, joined the ultimately failed efforts to prevent the book—or their perceived version of such a book—from ever hitting shelves, also citing the gratuitous services agreement in a letter to Wolkoff’s attorney.