Meet Melania Trump's secret brother, who lives in rural Slovenia, never met his sister Donald and
Two weeks after it was revealed that Melania Trump has a secret half-brother, the man has spoken out, saying he would love to get to know the father and half-sisters.
Denis Cigelnjak said that once the US presidential election is over, he'd like to have pizza and a drink with his father, Viktor Knavs, and his two half-sisters, Melania Trump and Ines Knavs.
The 50-year-old now lives in an apartment building in the former mining town Hrastnik in a remote mountainous area over an hour out of the Slovenian capital Ljubljana.
And despite wanting to meet his relatives, Cigelnjak told a local TV station he has never lacked anything in life having grown up without Viktor Knavs present.
The father-of-one told Planet.si: ‘My mother, my aunts and uncles gave me everything. But this does not mean that I did not want to know my father.’
Cigelnjak said his mother did not want anything from Viktor Knavs and was very disappointed when he demanded she had an abortion when she told him she was pregnant.
He said: ‘My mother did not agree, she wanted to keep me. She [my mother] did not want anything from him because she was so disappointed [with the breakdown of their relationship].
‘Then my grandmother persuaded her [my mother] to ask him [Viktor Knavs] for child maintenance payments, alimony.
It was my mother’s father [my grandfather] who supported me for 18 years as my own father repeatedly forgot to pay, even when he was reminded by the court.
He added: ‘I wonder how anyone can deny their own child.
‘However when the dust settles following the US presidential election I would like to go out with my father [Viktor Knavs], my two sisters [Melania Trump and Ines Knavs] for a drink or a pizza.’
Cigelnjak lives with his partner Maja and their eight-year-old daughter Mimi in an apartment in the outskirts of Hrastnik.
The Jewish journalist who profiled 46-year-old Melania for GQ and revealed the existence of Cigelnjak said on Tuesday that she has been forced to file a police report after receiving countless death threats.
Julia Ioffe filed her report for 'threat to kidnap or injure a person' with the Washington DC police and that they are investigating the harassment, which is mostly anti-Semitic in nature.
Ioffe, 33, and her family were forced to flee Russia when she was a child due to anti-Semitism.
She has been receiving messages and phone calls since the profile was released in GQ last month, including one from an aftermath service saying she had ordered a clean-up service for a homicide.
The police report also says; 'C-1 states that an unknown person sent her a caricature of a person being shot in the back of the head by another, among other harassing calls and disturbing emails depicting violent scenarios.'
When the article was first published, Melania lashed out at Ioffe, calling her report ‘dishonest media’.
'The article published in GQ today is yet another example of the dishonest media and their disingenuous reporting,' she wrote on her Facebook page. 'Julia Ioffe, a journalist who is looking to make a name for herself, clearly had an agenda when going after my family.'
Melania went on to note that her parents were 'private citizens' and shouldn't have been subjected to 'unfair scrutiny' in the piece.
The story, which was published online last month, goes into detail about Melania Trump's dad Viktor Knavs, who, Ioffe writes, shares a lot of similarities with Melania's husband, GOP frontrunner Donald Trump.
'Like Donald Trump, Viktor Knavs is not just a hard-charging businessman with a penchant for real estate; he is also viciously litigious when it comes to the women in his life,' Ioffe wrote.
The journalist discovered legal papers that documents a legal battle between Knavs and a former girlfriend, Marija Cigelnjak, who had gotten pregnant with a son.
Knavs had denied paternity, taking Cigelnjak to court, and eventually a blood test determined he was the dad.
In the profile, Melania Trump first denied Denis Cigelnjak's existence over the phone and then changed her story, telling Ioffe that she didn't understand what the reporter is asking.
'I've known about this for years,' she said to GQ. 'My father is a private individual. Please respect his privacy,' she added.
Melania Trump tried to seed doubt in her Facebook post as well.
'There are numerous inaccuracies in this article including certain statements about my family and claims on personal matters,' she said.
