Melania Trump issued a statement following POLITICO's reporting that avoided the questions raised in the story. | Getty Melania Trump statement on immigration status dodges key points

Hours after POLITICO published a report on gaps in Melania Trump’s account of her immigration to the United States, she issued a statement on Twitter on Thursday that sailed around the central questions raised by the story.

By specifying the year 1996, Trump’s statement conspicuously avoids addressing multiple reports and photographs that place her in the United States and working as a model in 1995, as well as a statement by Trump’s Slovenian biographer to POLITICO that she was performing modeling work in the United States that was not "technically" legal during her first trips there in 1995.

And Trump’s former roommate in New York, Matthew Atanian, told POLITICO’s Julia Ioffe in April that the two shared an apartment during a period that spanned 1995 to 1996.

Trump’s statement also does not address her multiple past statements that she would return every few months to Europe to renew her visa. Those statements are consistent with the allegation that she initially entered the United States on a short-term visa that would not have permitted modeling work.

Representatives of the Trump campaign and the Trump Organization did not immediately respond to questions seeking elaboration of Trump’s statement.

Other news outlets, including Bloomberg View, have also noted the inconsistencies in accounts of Melania Trump's immigration status.