Prince Andrew Book Removes Claim About Melania Trump and Jeffrey Epstein After First Lady Threatened $1B Lawsuit to Hunter Biden

A new book about Prince Andrew has removed the claim that Jeffrey Epstein introduced President Donald Trump to his wife, first lady Melania Trump.

The first 60,000 copies of Andrew Lownie’s Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, released on Aug. 14, include the allegation.

During Hunter Biden‘s Aug. 5 interview with Andrew Callaghan on YouTube, Biden repeats biographer Michael Wolff’s claim that Jeffrey Epstein was the one who initially introduced the president to his third wife.

Entitled included a similar claim. Now, future print editions of Lownie’s book, the e-book and the audiobook reflect the change.

A HarperCollins UK spokesman told The Telegraph that the passages that discuss the claim have been removed after conversations with the publisher and Lownie, 64. The publisher’s representative confirmed that although the book is published in the U.K. by HarperCollins, it is self-published in the U.S.

PEOPLE reached out to HarperCollins UK for comment.

Lownie and HarperCollins’ decision follows reports that Melania’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, sent a letter to Biden on Aug. 6, demanding a full retraction of an interview. The first lady, 55, and Brito demanded that Biden, 55, “immediately retract the false, defamatory, disparaging and inflammatory statements made about Mrs. Trump.” 

“Indeed, the video has since been re-published by various media outlets, journalists, and political commentators with millions of social media followers that have disseminated the false and defamatory statements therein to tens of millions of people worldwide,” Brito continued.

If Biden failed to comply, Melania planned to sue Biden for $1 billion to “recover the overwhelming financial and reputational harm that you have caused her to suffer,” Brito wrote. They gave Biden until Aug. 7 to comply with their demands of both a retraction of the video and an apology. 

Shortly after, the president, 79, told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade on Aug. 12 that he was the one who encouraged Melania to “go forward with it.”

“I told her, ‘Let’s go ahead and do it,’ ” Donald said, adding, “I let her use my lawyers.” 

“Jeffrey Epstein had nothing to do with Melania and introducing,” the president said. “It was another person actually… but it wasn’t Jeffrey Epstein.”

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Days later, on Aug. 14, Biden returned to Callaghan’s show and said, “F— that. That’s not gonna happen.”

Biden then again cited Wolff, who allegedly made the same claim. In July, Wolff was cited by the Daily Beast in a story titled “Melania Trump ‘very involved’ in Epstein Scandal: Author.” Wolff allegedly made claims similar to Biden’s. But after being threatened with legal repercussions, the outlet deleted the story in its entirety.

Political analyst James Carville also recently issued an apology to the first lady after making similar claims on his Aug. 7 podcast and promptly hearing from Melania’s lawyers.

The Trump administration is facing pressure to release files related to Epstein, to whom the president has been publicly linked. Donald was friends with the disgraced financier and pedophile for many years, but the two had a falling out in the mid-2000s, Donald told reporters shortly before Epstein died by suicide in 2019.

His name was mentioned in flight logs released earlier this year by Attorney General Pam Bondi a total of seven times. Despite his name appearing in the flight logs, it does not necessarily indicate wrongdoing, as many of the individuals named could have been on Epstein’s plane for legitimate reasons.

In early July, the FBI and Department of Justice released a joint memo saying their investigation into Epstein’s alleged crimes and subsequent death was complete. The memo also stated the investigation found that Epstein’s long-rumored “client list” did not exist.