It was a bit ironic that Melania Trump’s naked photoshoot surfaced around the same time Donald Trump’s plan to crack down on porn made headlines, but that same spread is now raising potentially explosive questions given a bedrock issue powering her husband’s presidential campaign: his tough stance on immigration.
According to a new report from Politico, there are a few gaps in Melania Trump’s immigration story from her native Slovenia that may call her citizenship into question. The wannabe first lady was quick to deny she broke the law Thursday, but the photoshoot seems to place her working in the US in 1995—despite her having previously suggested she arrived a year later.
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Melania Trump has told the press on at least two occasions—in practically the same words—that she followed the rules by returning to get her visa stamped in Europe every couple of months. But the type of visa that requires a stamp every few months is usually a temporary visitor or business type of visa, rather than a longer-term work visa she said she had (and that would have allowed her to legally work in the US).
If the model did in fact have a B-1 Temporary Business Visitor or B-2 Tourist Visa at the time she was working as a model in the US, it would constitute visa fraud. Experts told Politico if this were the case, Melania Trump’s now-official citizenship could be called into question—even though she’s married to a US citizen hellbent on keeping illegal immigrants out of the country.
In her defense, Lady Trump tweeted Thursday, “Let me set the record straight: I have at all times been in full compliance with the immigration laws of this country. Period.” But given the recent kerfuffle over the nature of her college education—and the general tendency to massage the truth by the Trump clan—one might be forgiven for a healthy dose of skepticism here.
Read: Trump Campaign Admitted Yeah, OK, Maybe It Did Plagiarize Michelle Obama’s Speech
