Mrs. Trump's ex-adviser says she taped calls for protection

A former friend and adviser of Melania Trump said Tuesday that she made recordings of her conversations with first lady because she needed evidence to protect herself amid questions about costs of President Donald Trump's inauguration.

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, whose book “Melania and Me: Rise and Fall of My Friendship with First Lady,” was released this week, helped produce Trump's inauguration and later worked for first lady as an unpaid White House adviser.

Wolkoff left White House in February 2018 when her contract was terminated. White House blasted book as “full of mistruths and paraia.”

Separately, Wolkoff told Washington Post that Mrs. Trump used private email accounts while at White House. Ors in White House, including Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, have been criticized for doing official business on private accounts – but, unlike m, first lady is t a government employee.

In an interview on MSNBC’s “ Rachel Maddow Show," Wolkoff said, “I’ve been accused of taping my friend, as White House said, and how horrible of a human being I am for doing that."

“And y're right. If she was my friend, it would be horrible. But Melania and White House had accused me of criminal activity and publicly shamed and fired me and made me ir scapegoat," Wolkoff said. “At that moment in time, that's when I pressed record. She was longer my friend and she was willing to let m take me down."

Wolkoff said Melania Trump told her that White House attorneys claimed re was or choice but to turn her back on her friend because re was a possible probe of presidential inauguration committee. Wolkoff said she taped first lady because "I was going to do anything in my power to make sure that I was protected."

Stephanie Grisham, chief of staff and spokesperson for Melania Trump, said Wolkoff was out for revenge.

“Anybody who secretly tapes ir self-described best friend is, by definition, dishonest,” Grisham said.

" book is t only full of mistruths and paraia, it is based on some imagined need for revenge. Wolkoff builds herself up while belittling and blaming everyone she worked with, yet she still mand to be victim. Sadly, this is a deeply insecure woman who’s need to be relevant defies logic.”

In book, Wolkoff says she wished she had never met first lady, who is a former fashion model. Wolkoff, a New York-based event planner, said pair first met in 2003 in hallways of Vogue magazine, where Wolkoff worked.

Wolkoff devotes two of book’s 11 chapters to planning for January 2017 inauguration, describing committee responsible for raising money to pay for several days of events as beset with organizational and communications issues that complicated her work.

She says she repeatedly raised questions about spending but she eventually came to be viewed as problem. Trump’s Presidential Inaugural Committee raised nearly $107 million for lavish event, an unprecedented inaugural price tag nearly twice that of President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009.

Some of those involved in or aware of committee’s work told Associated Press in September 2017 that orchestration of inauguration was marred by last-minute decisions, staffing turver and little financial oversight.

Wolkoff told ABC News in an interview broadcast Monday that she continues to cooperate with multiple criminal investigations into committee’s operations.