Melania Trump cuts ties to friend/adviser whose firm got $26 million for Trump inauguration

Maria Puente | USA TODAY

First lady Melania Trump's New York friend, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, has been cut loose from her team as an unpaid adviser after controversy arose over the $26 million her firm received from the presidential inaugural committee.

Mrs. Trump's spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, confirmed Tuesday to USA TODAY that the first lady's office has "severed the gratuitous services contract" it had with Wolkoff, a New York-based event planner and longtime friend of FLOTUS.

Wolkoff is expected to remain Trump's friend and unofficial adviser but she won't work on official White House business.

Wolkoff, who was known for helping Vogue editor Anna Wintour plan the annual Met Gala, has been a friend to the first lady, a former fashion model, for years, and was one of the first people Mrs. Trump turned to after Donald Trump was elected.

She has been an unpaid adviser ever since, though she has remained in New York and rarely speaks to reporters about Trump or anything else.

But this month The New York Times reported that recent tax filings show that the Trump inaugural committee paid two private companies more than $50 million for event planning, including $26 million that went to Wolkoff's recently formed company, WIS Media Partners of Marina del Rey, Calif.

Melania Trump adviser's inaugural bill: Trump's inaugural committee paid $26M to firm started by Melania Trump adviser

The Times reported that records show the firm was created in December 2016, about six weeks before the inauguration, and its founder, according to a person familiar with the firm, was Wolkoff.

The inaugural committee raised a record $106.7 million for the inauguration, and until Feb. 15, it was a mystery how those funds were spent. The payment to the firm linked Wolkoff was one-quarter of the total $104 million expenses spent by the committee, which includes $5 million of donations to charity.

Grisham said the first lady had no role in the inaugural committee and didn't know how its budget was spent.

She told the Times that Wolkoff had a contract as “a special government employee,” a category of federal worker created to allow the government the flexibility to hire specialists to fill discrete roles, usually on a temporary basis.

Even volunteers at the White House have to sign such contracts and pass security and background checks.