Melania Trump releases more immigration details, no records
WASHINGTON — Melania Trump released a letter Wednesday from an immigration attorney that provided more detail on what she said was her legal pathway to U.S. citizenship. But the Slovenian-born wife of the GOP presidential nominee did not publish any part of her immigration file— official documents that would put to rest questions about whether she followed immigration law.
The two-page letter from New York attorney Michael J. Wildes, who has represented Donald Trump’s companies, also advanced an alternate timeline for a nude photo shoot that had been cited in news reports as possible evidence of Mrs. Trump working as a model in New York City without authorization. At issue is whether the photo shoot occurred in 1995— before Mrs. Trump has said she began legally working in the U.S. — or in 1996, as Mrs. Trump and Wildes assert.
The letter, posted on Mrs. Trump’s Twitter account, marks the first time that she has publicly identified the type of visas she held and gave specifics about her entry into the U.S. Mrs. Trump has often said she came to the U.S. legally and used her story to defend Donald Trump’s hard line on illegal immigration, an issue that he has made a signature part of his campaign.
In the letter from Wildes, it’s unclear whether Mrs. Trump provided him access to her full immigration file during his review. Wildes wrote that he had reviewed a series of news reports and “documents regarding the U.S. immigration history of Mrs. Melania Trump.” But the letter did not indicate which documents.