Melania Trump has demanded that Hunter Biden retract comments linking her to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and has threatened to sue if he does not.

Biden, the son of the former president Joe Biden, alleged in an interview this month that Epstein introduced the first lady to Donald Trump.

The statements were false, defamatory and “extremely salacious,” Melania Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, said in a letter to Biden. Biden’s remarks were widely disseminated on social media and reported by media outlets around the world, causing the first lady “to suffer overwhelming financial and reputational harm,” he added.

Biden made the Epstein comments during a sprawling interview with the British journalist Andrew Callaghan in which he lashed out at “elites” and others in the Democratic party who he said undermined his father before he dropped out of last year’s presidential campaign.