Deep within a Racked.com report on Melania Trump’s mysteriously defunct caviar skincare line, reporter Peter Moskowitz revealed that Trump appears to have lied under oath about having graduated with a bachelor’s degree in architecture, an assertion that was made earlier on her website and later repeated in her bio in the Republican National Convention program.
Racked investigated the disappearance of Melania’s much-hyped yet barely sold Melania Skin Care Collection, whose marketing materials included this hilarious “aging pyramid”:
Essentially, according to Racked, the skincare line “imploded” about a year after she signed a deal with Indianapolis-based New Sunshine LLC, which was started by multimillionaire Steve Hilbert and militant conservative billionaire John Menard. The convoluted story of the brand’s demise reportedly goes like this: Menard reportedly fired Hilbert from an investment company they ran together; Hilbert refused to leave; Menard sued Hilbert; Hilbert countersued Menard; Hilbert’s wife Tomisue also sued Menard, claiming she’d been pressured to have a threesome with Menard and his wife. Melania Trump was sued as well in an attempt to void her contract; she eventually sued New Sunshine for $50 million and settled for an undisclosed sum.
According to Racked’s account, Melania had made every effort to launch and promote this skincare line and was simply a victim of shitty circumstances, albeit circumstances she knowingly stepped into by choosing to do business with a pair of yahoos. But most interestingly, Racked notes (in an oddly placed parenthetical): “If the media reports about her never receiving a degree from a university in Slovenia are true, the court transcripts also reveal Melania lied under oath about her degree when she told the court she’d graduated with a bachelor’s in architecture.”
(Various media outlets, beginning with Julia Ioffe’s April GQ profile of Melania, have reported that she dropped out of college after a year; following these reports, melaniatrump.com disappeared and now redirects to trump.com.)
In an Indianapolis courtroom in 2013, Melania was asked, according to a screenshot of the court documents: “Would you please explain to the Judge your formal education including what schools you attended and from which you graduated?”
She replied: “I attended and graduated from design school, from Fashion and Industrial Design school and also attended, graduated from architecture degree, bachelor degree.”
We’ve reached out to the Trump Organization for comment, and will update if they respond.