Since Donald Trump’s inauguration and the Women’s March that followed, Free Melania became a meme that was shared everywhere, as people pondered how his wife coped with the controversy that surrounds him.
Throughout his term as president of the United States, and ever since, he has been embroiled in scandal.
The latest news has seen Trump mentioned in court papers during a trial against his former personal secretary and lawyer Rudolph Giuliani, described in court papers, as “a longtime friend and close confidante of then-President Donald Trump, in addition to being a member of Trump’s legal team”.
In the court documents, a former aide to Giuliani, Noelee Dunphy, has accused him of offering to sell presidential pardons for $2 million (£1.6 m) each during his tenure, “which he and President Trump would split”.
Noelee Dunphy, a New York-based PR professional who worked with Trump’s former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, claimed in court that she was told the pair would offer the pardons for a fee in the ongoing trial. She is suing Mr Giuliani for “unlawful abuses of power, wide-ranging sexual assault and harassment, wage theft, and other misconduct” committed while she worked for him in 2019 and 2020. Mr Giuliani has strongly denied the claims.
And this is not the only time Trump’s name has come up in court in recent weeks.
In a civil court case that would be hard for any wife to hear, a jury found her husband liable for sexually abusing and defaming journalist E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million (around £3.9 million) in damages.
He has appealed the finding, but the verdict was another legal setback for Trump as he seeks to regain the presidency in 2024.
In April, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records, and was accused of paying hush money to a former porn actress, with whom he allegedly had sex just a month after Melania had given birth to their son, Barron.
But who is the woman behind Donald Trump, and what is she doing now, with his name again being dragged through the mud?
Who is Melania Trump?
Originally from Slovenia, and born Melanija Knavs in 1970, the wife of Donald Trump is only the second First Lady to be born outside the United States, after the wife of former president John Quincy Adams, Louisa Adams, and is the only First Lady to become a naturalised US citizen.
She has modelled since the age of five and, when she became professional, changed her name to Melania Knauss. Melanjia then moved to the US and appeared in a number of high-profile campaigns.
She met Trump for the first time in 1998 at a fashion party in New York. He was married at the time to Marla Maples, but they divorced a year later. It is not suggested she was involved in the breakdown of that marriage.
How long have Melania and Donald been married?
The pair dated from around 1999 to 2005, when they married at his home in Florida. It was Donald Trump’s third marriage, after Ivanka Trump and Maples, but her first.
Do the Trumps have children?
Yes, one together. Barron William Trump, now 17, was born in 2006. He is Melania’s only child, but Donald Trump’s fifth. Following his birth, Melania applied to become a ‘naturalised’ US citizen.
What is Melania doing now?
Melania has kept a low profile, both during Donald Trump’s reign as president and ever since his departure.
In April’s court hearing, he had an array of supporters with him, but Melania was not one of them.
However, it has since been reported that Melania has vowed to stand by her husband through all of the hearings and allegations.
The Mail Online reported a source as saying: “Mrs Trump is strong. She is focused on her family and stands behind her husband, as she always has. For the past seven years, the left has made multiple attempts to smear and attack her family, and this is just the latest attempt to bring him down.”
Friends have reported how the former First Lady has thrown herself into work recently.
Melania now lives back in Florida, and is continuing work on her Be Best Programme, which she launched during her time as First Lady to protect young people from online harm and cyberbullying.
Last year, she launched Fostering the Future, an extension of Be Best, which focuses on supporting children in the US foster system.
