• Melania Trump made a rare public appearance at the White House on Monday.
• Trump praised her for bringing together both sides on revenge porn and deepfakes.
• The reality, however, is more complicated.

Melania Trump has never been a traditional first lady. But to hear it from President Donald Trump at a White House event on Monday, she also has a rare ability to smash past entrenched partisan divides.

"I'm not even sure you realize, honey," Trump said to his wife in the Rose Garden at the White House. "You know, a lot of the Democrats and Republicans don't get along so well. You've made them get along."

The first lady's purported achievement: Supporting the passage of the "TAKE IT DOWN" Act, a bill to combat revenge porn, including deepfakes generated by artificial intelligence.

Trump signed that bill on Monday. Though most states already have revenge porn laws on the books, it's the first bill that Trump has signed in his second term that touches AI.

Melania Trump's appearance on Monday was a relative rarity. The New York Times reported earlier this month that she had spent less than 14 days at the White House since Trump's second inauguration, and the first lady has long taken a different approach to the role from prior presidential spouses.

She ultimately spoke for less than four minutes, thanking lawmakers and advocates as she decried the impact of new technologies on children.

"Artificial intelligence and social media are the digital candy for the next generation: sweet, addictive, and engineered to have an impact on the cognitive development of our children," she said.

The first lady has sought to put her stamp on the legislation, framing it as a continuation of the children's well-being and online safety initiatives that she undertook during her husband's first term. "Today, I'm proud to say that the values of 'Be Best' will be reflected in the law," she said.

The reality, however, is more complex.

The bill had been making its way through Congress last year, and it was originally supposed to be signed into law before the Trumps returned to the White House.

But after the bill passed the Senate for the first time in December, the legislation was slipped into an ill-fated government funding bill that Elon Musk and hardline conservatives tanked for unrelated reasons.

The spending bill that ultimately passed days later did not include the TAKE IT DOWN Act, requiring lawmakers to go through the whole exercise once again this year.

The bill was also never that controversial, at least on Capitol Hill. While some digital rights advocates raised free speech concerns, only two lawmakers voted against it when it came up for a vote in the House last month.

Meanwhile, it passed the Senate via a "voice vote" — meaning no one opposed it, so there was no need to hold a vote — in both December and February.

On Monday, none of that was mentioned. The first lady, according to Trump, had taken up an "amazing issue," tackling a problem that's "gone on at levels that nobody's ever seen before."

"Working with our first lady, though, we've shown that that bipartisanship is possible," Trump said. "I mean, it's the first time I've seen such a level of bipartisanship, and it's a beautiful thing to do."

• Instagram is testing a new program that pays creators for driving app traffic and sign-ups.
• The program, called "Referrals," offers $100 for every new user or 1,000 visits, up to $20,000.
• The test is limited to US-based creators and is invite-only, Meta told BI.

Instagram's got a new pitch for creators: Get paid for bringing people to the app.

The Meta-owned app has been quietly testing a program that pays creators for driving people to the app, the company confirmed to Business Insider.

The program, called "Referrals," is an invite-only, limited test that pays US-based creators when people visit Instagram or sign up for a new Instagram account from links shared by the creator.

There are two ways creators can earn money, capped at $20,000, from Instagram's referrals:

1. Some creators will be able to earn $100 for every eligible new user who signs up for an Instagram account.
2. Other creators can earn $100 for every 1,000 "eligible visits" to the Instagram app.

For instance, Courtney Canfield, a creator who runs an Instagram page for her dog Rambo, was offered the latter.

Instagram's referral program is set to run for six weeks from May through June. Meta is working with a third-party partner called Glimmer to handle the payments, according to an Instagram help center page for the program.

The app is telling creators to share links — such as to their profile, reels, posts, stories, and channels — "off Instagram," on other websites and apps like TikTok, YouTube, Discord, and Substack, according to a screenshot viewed by Business Insider.

Instagram has faced fierce competition from other apps like TikTok and YouTube. The new monetization test also comes as Meta's broader competition with other social media platforms takes center stage during the Federal Trade Commission's landmark antitrust case against the company.

Instagram has recently been testing a few new ways to incentivize creators to post to the app as it continues to compete for people's attention. Earlier this year, in January, when TikTok was on the brink of a potential ban, Instagram rolled out a "Breakthrough Bonus" for creators coming over from TikTok. Instagram also inked deals with some creators for exclusive-to-Instagram reels content that ranged from $2,500 to $50,000 a month over the course of three months.

Over the past few years, Instagram has also tested several creator monetization programs.

Instagram's not the only social-media platform to incentivize people to bring over new users. Last year, TikTok rolled out a referral program that rewarded people with shopping discounts and other financial incentives for inviting friends to the app, according to The Information.

• Trump's bill could lead to rampant AI abuse, organizations warn in a letter to Congress.
• A provision in the bill would prevent states from regulating AI for a decade.
• The critics argue it risks civil rights, privacy, and accountability.

A group of high-profile unions, advocacy groups, non-profits, and academic institutions are warning that a provision in President Donald Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" could lead to the "unfettered abuse" of AI.

In a letter to Congress on Monday, 141 organizations called out a provision in Trump's signature bill that would prohibit states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade. The provision, which Republicans placed into the sweeping tax, immigration, and defense legislation, would be a huge victory for regulation-wary AI companies.

But it would be a nightmare for Americans' civil rights, the groups argued in their letter, which was addressed to Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

"Protections for civil rights and children's privacy, transparency in consumer-facing chatbots to prevent fraud, and other safeguards would be invalidated, even those that are uncontroversial," the letter reads.

"The resulting unfettered abuses of AI or automated decision systems could run the gamut from pocketbook harms to working families like decisions on rental prices, to serious violations of ordinary Americans' civil rights, and even to large-scale threats like aiding in cyber attacks on critical infrastructure or the production of biological weapons," it continues.

And, the letter added, without state-level regulations on emerging technologies, companies wouldn't be held accountable.

"This moratorium would mean that even if a company deliberately designs an algorithm that causes foreseeable harm — regardless of how intentional or egregious the misconduct or how devastating the consequences — the company making that bad tech would be unaccountable to lawmakers and the public," the letter reads.

The letter's signatories include Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Economic Policy Institute, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, the Alphabet Workers Union, and many others.

The provision would invalidate critical state laws — like those already in effect in New Jersey and Colorado — designed to protect people from the harms created by AI, like algorithmic discrimination, which can affect everything from housing, policing, healthcare, and financial services, the letter argues.

Those harms include "many documented cases of AI having highly sexualized conversations with minors and even encouraging minors to commit harm to themselves and others; AI programs making healthcare decisions that have led to adverse and biased outcomes; and AI enabling thousands of women and girls to be victimized by nonconsensual deepfakes," the letter says.

Trump's signature bill, which the House Budget Committee moved forward on Sunday, still has to clear a series of votes in the House before going to the Senate, and the bill's AI provision has to meet a high bar to remain in the larger bill.

The White House and a representative for Speaker Mike Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

On Andrew Schulz's popular show Flagrant, Sanders agreed the party hasn't held a fair primary since 2008 and questioned its impact on democracy.

Jake Paul finally revealed more details about the failed Canelo Alvarez fight that nearly took place in May 2025.

• Microsoft's Build developer conference kicked off Monday with a slew of agentic AI updates.
• Microsoft's CTO said there's been an "explosion" of people using agents over the last year, with daily active users doubling.
• The keynote included new agentic features in GitHub, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and appearances from Sam Altman and Elon Musk.

It was all about agentic AI at Microsoft's big developer event on Monday.

"The thing that we've seen over the past year is just sort of an explosion of agents," Microsoft CTO and executive vice president of AI, Kevin Scott, said during the company's Build conference.

Scott added that the number of daily active users of the various AI agents that Microsoft has visibility into "more than doubled" since Microsoft's Build event last year.

CEOs and executives across the tech industry have heralded 2025 as the year of agentic AI, and the Microsoft executive took some time to define what Microsoft means by the term.

Scott described the AI agents Microsoft is building as "a thing that a human being is able to delegate tasks to." AI agents are still in their early days, and Scott said there's still a bit of a "capability overhang with reasoning" at the moment, but they will continue to improve. As that happens over the next year, he said AI agents will get more powerful and cheaper to operate.

'The next big step forward'

Microsoft made a slew of announcements about AI updates and partnerships related to agentic AI during its opening keynote at Build.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that the company is working to create a host of tools to help build an open, "agentic web" at scale, including cloud computing tools available through its Microsoft Azure platform. The company demoed multiple new AI features available in Windows, Office, Azure, and other platforms throughout the keynote.

Showcasing Microsoft's new Azure SRE agent for site reliability engineering, which will be embedded in GitHub Copilot, Nadella said agents are all about having a reliable AI "peer" that you can delegate complex tasks to and trust to help remove "pain points" for developers, such as getting woken up in the middle of the night to deal with a website issue.

"This is the next big step forward, which is a full coding agent, built right into GitHub, taking Copilot from being a pair programmer to a peer programmer," Nadella said. "You can assign issues to Copilot, bug fixes, new features, code maintenance, and it'll complete these tasks autonomously."

Microsoft also flexed its reach with virtual appearances from a who's who of AI CEOs, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Tesla and xAI CEO Elon Musk, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Altman made a live appearance virtually to talk about the evolution of agentic AI and the recent launch of Codex, the AI startup's new agent designed to assist programmers with writing code, fixing bugs, and running tests. Altman described Codex as "true software engineering task delegation."

"We've been talking about someday we'd get to a real agentic coding experience, and it's kind of wild to me that it's finally here," Altman said. "I think this is one of the biggest changes to programming that I've ever seen."

"This idea that you now have a real virtual teammate that you can assign work to, that you can say, 'Hey, go off and do some of the stuff you were just doing and increasingly more advanced things,' you know at some point saying, 'I've got a big idea, go off and work for a couple of days and do it,'" the OpenAI CEO added.

The productivity gains can also be significant, Altman said.

"It was amazing to watch over the last few months as we were working on Codex internally — you know there's always a few people who are the early adopters — and how quickly the people who were just using Codex all day changed their workflow and just the incredible amount they were able to do relative to someone else was quite interesting," he said.

Microsoft announced plans to expand the AI models available through Azure to integrate xAI's Grok 3 and Grok 3 Mini. In a pre-recorded clip, Musk, who once interned at Microsoft, talked with Nadella about his first experiences using Microsoft software as well as Grok's capabilities.

Microsoft also introduced "Copilot Tuning" to create agents using company data. The announcement confirmed Business Insider's reporting from last week that Microsoft was planning to debut a new Copilot designed to "rapidly channel an organization's knowledge into a Copilot that can 'talk,' 'think,' and 'work' like the tenant itself," according to an internal memo. That project was previously called Tenant Copilot internally, the company has since confirmed.

In Satya Nadella's closing comments, the Microsoft CEO said the company is trying to apply AI across the "full stack" of software development and agentic web products, including Microsoft 365 Teams, Copilot Studio, and more.

"Ultimately, though, all of this is about creating opportunity to fuel your ambition," the Microsoft CEO said, pointing to a father who used Foundry to speed the diagnosis of a rare disease affecting his son and a startup in South America that created an app to gamify wellness.

• Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is railing against a major stablecoin bill in Congress.
• Warren argued that the legislation, if passed, will "accelerate Trump's corruption."
• The Massachusetts senator has been a frequent critic of the administration on regulatory matters.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts will take to the Senate floor on Monday to push back against a major stablecoin bill, arguing that the legislation could instead benefit President Donald Trump and his family's cryptocurrency business ventures.

Warren, a former Democratic presidential candidate and the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, is on the opposing side of the so-called GENIUS Act, a bill intended to regulate stablecoins — a type of currency whose value is tied to another asset.

"The GENIUS Act will accelerate Trump's corruption by supercharging the size of the stablecoin market and the reach and profitability of USD1," the lawmaker will say in a Senate speech. "For the first time in American history, it also makes our president — Donald Trump — the regulator of his own financial product."

"Congress should not be making it even easier for him to line his pockets with even more shady crypto cash," the remarks continue to say. "If Congress does not fix this issue here, today, then it will be aiding and abetting his corruption every time President Trump's stablecoin is used to finance a corrupt deal."

The stablecoin bill once had a bipartisan veneer, with Democrats joining Republicans in backing the legislation. But the bill has fallen out of favor with Democrats in the wake of Trump's crypto ventures, including the launch of his own meme coin in January and an upcoming dinner for his coin's top 220 investors.

The top 25 holders of the meme coin are set to attend a reception and a VIP White House tour.

In Warren's remarks, she also contends that the legislation could "directly lead to the next financial meltdown."

Before her 2012 election to the Senate, Warren conceived of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the independent consumer protection agency that the White House DOGE office has sought to dismantle since the beginning of the year.

• US special operations is using artificial intelligence to reduce the cognitive load on operators.
• This includes not just combat operations but also paperwork, manual tasks, and data.
• Various types of AI are already being employed and expanded.

From warfighting to paperwork, US Special Operations Forces are interested in getting in on AI to simplify the work.

The goal for these elite forces, much like it is for regular people working office jobs and using AI to sort data or compile information, is to lessen the overall cognitive load, or mental effort, required for whatever a task may be. A lot of different types of artificial intelligence are being used, and it's only growing.

AI has many potential applications for the US military, from autonomous features in uncrewed systems to AI-enabled targeting to enhanced situational awareness. The Department of Defense is eager to implement this technology to prepare US forces for a high-end technological conflict chock full of data and information.

Future wars could be fought in an environment where decision-making may need to happen quicker than humans alone can do, and that's where military officials see the benefit of AI and human-machine teaming.

With AI, "we can reduce the cognitive burden of our operators," Col. Rhea Pritchett, the program executive officer of SOF Digital Applications, said at SOF Week in Tampa, Florida, earlier this month. Instead of worrying about other things, operators "will take that precious time to critically think about actions that they need to take next to achieve the effect that they want."

AI can sift through massive amounts of data quickly to focus on necessary information in a combat scenario and it can aid in mission planning and command and control functions.

This technology can also be used in battlespace awareness tools "to identify the position or location information of objects, people, and terrain — enhancing operator analysis and decision-making capabilities," Pritchett added over email.

These kinds of capabilities are already being developed.

But there are other functions of AI in SOF, and they aren't unlike the way civilians use ChatGPT or other AI-driven platforms for their jobs and personal lives.

That includes paperwork: situational reports, concepts for operations, and forecasting supplies. The tasks that might take an operator a long time to complete and draw their focus away from other aspects of the job.

Back-end work, as Ben Van Roo, CEO and cofounder of Legion Intelligence Inc, put it, could also be aided by artificial intelligence. Such work could include better search functions for analyzing DoD doctrine and understanding elements of specific locations, commands, or job positions.

One prime example could be using AI tools when entering a new position to quickly get up to speed on the work. When military personnel receive orders for their next job, it can be a lot of work to learn not only the ins and outs of the position itself but also the larger bureaucracy, geographic information, and historical and political context, what their predecessor did, types of weapons and capabilities present, and so on.

That is a bit different than how AI in the military is regularly perceived. "People tend to jump to Terminator," Van Roo said. "Actually, the great majority of it right now is just, people can barely even do their jobs with all these archaic systems."

While there are many possibilities for AI technology in warfighting systems, such as the AI-enabled drones that are demonstrating just how effective this technology can make an uncrewed fighting platform or the AI algorithms being taught to fly fighter jets, there's much that can be done to improve the mundane.

AI has the potential to address some of the headaches and help reform some older technological policies, effectively streamlining the processes. It might even have an application in assessing details for contracts and programs.

"The potential to relieve the cognitive load is extremely high," Van Roo said.

AI could provide assistance with what some operators might consider the more time-consuming tasks of their job and take a form similar to an AI assistant designed to take notes, gather and review key client data, transcribe meetings, and outline important takeaways.

AI systems are already being used in SOF, Pritchett told BI, including generative machine learning, large language models, natural language processing, and computer vision.

The rise of AI in militaries has been met with skepticism and ethical concerns from experts and officials about its implementation, especially in combat scenarios.

The Pentagon has maintained that its policy on AI will keep a human in the loop for decision-making, though some observers have argued that doing so might not always be possible in a high-speed, data-driven future fight. Some have also cautioned that the technology may end up developing at a much quicker pace than Washington and the Pentagon can regulate it.

Trump's acolytes took aim at Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson after Biden's cancer diagnosis and Jackson's position on a recent ruling.

• I used my mom's connections to land a summer internship, which led to a full-time job.
• I suffered from impostor syndrome, worried I only got the job because of my mom.
• But my mom only made the introduction; I got the job because of my accomplishments.

When I was considering my summer plans in early 2021, I knew I had to land a great internship as a college student. I debated whether to reach out to the one person I knew who had the most connections. Ultimately, I knew she would help me land the summer internship I needed. So, I asked my mom for help.

My mother has always been my inspiration as a successful businesswoman. She has held many positions in C-suite and executive roles, oftentimes being the only woman with a seat at the table. She is now an entrepreneur and business owner with connections in many industries.

I knew she would have someone I could connect with to find a job related to my field of study: public health. But once I landed the job, I experienced impostor syndrome.

Using my mom's connections helped me

Before I turned to my mother for help, I was plagued with whether I should ask for it. Did it take away from my own success by asking her? Was I earning what I had worked hard for, or just benefiting from her hard work?

Once I was able to get past the mental hurdle and ask for help, my job search quickly began to fall into place.

In my initial application, I listed my mother as a reference, as she worked very closely with the company. I didn't reference our relationship during the interview process or during work. I only brought it up when it was relevant to the conversation, but for the most part, people knew I was there for the same reasons as anyone else: to learn, to contribute, and to gain relevant experience for my intended career.

Even though the connection was made for me, the interview, conversations, and chance to position myself for a summer internship were all on me. I landed my first professional job, which led to a second internship the following summer with a different team at the same company. After those two internships, I scored a full-time role after graduation.

I struggled with impostor syndrome

At first, I struggled with impostor syndrome, thinking I had landed the job only because of my connections. I worried I hadn't actually earned the positions I was given, especially that first internship.

However, my mom repeatedly reminds me that she only made the introduction; the rest was my own doing.

My career trajectory would look very different if I didn't have that initial introduction. I feel that I utilized all of the resources available to me, but that doesn't take away from the accomplishment.

Using your network is an important step in searching for job opportunities

More recently, I have used connections to explore different ways to use a law degree. I had just finished my first year of law school and was panicking over whether I truly wanted to be a practicing attorney.

By speaking to some of my mom's contacts who had gone to law school and gone into different fields, I saw all the different ways that I could apply my law degree beyond being a practicing attorney.

I still use connections from family and friends wherever possible. The job market is hard, and I think everyone should use their network from family, neighbors, and even professors as a tool to get their foot in the door.

• Walmart's announcement that it will raise prices due to tariffs has other retailers "delighted."
• The news gives retailers cover to raise their own prices, experts told BI.
• Trump's criticism of Walmart sends a warning about discussing price hikes.

Consumers may not be psyched about Walmart's announcement that it's going to raise prices because of President Donald Trump's tariffs, but other retailers are likely breathing a sigh of relief.

Retail analysts told Business Insider that Walmart did other companies a favor with the news, giving them more freedom to raise their own price tags.

"What they are doing is providing air cover for the tens of thousands of retailers — extra-large, large, medium, and small — all of whom are faced with exactly the same issue, and all of whom are going to be raising their prices," said Mark Cohen, a professor at Columbia Business School and the former director of retail studies at Columbia Business School. Other retailers are, he said, "delighted" about the benchmark Walmart set.

Retailers across the board are contending with rising costs, the experts told BI, but Walmart "leads the market on price," according to the cofounder of the blog Omni Talk Retail, Chris Walton. The country's biggest retailer said shoppers will probably start to see prices tick up at the end of this month and more drastically in June, and those BI spoke to agreed with that timeline.

"We have always worked to keep our prices as low as possible and we won't stop. We'll keep prices as low as we can for as long as we can given the reality of small retail margins," Molly Blakeman, a spokesperson for Walmart, told BI in a statement.

GlobalRetail analyst Neil Saunders wrote in an email that Walmart's honesty about price hikes might open the door for other retailers to have "open dialogues." Yet the honesty didn't come without consequences — Trump bashed the company in a Truth Social post, saying Walmart should, '"EAT THE TARIFFS,' and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I'll be watching."

Representatives for the White House directed BI to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt's comments on Monday about Walmart, when she confirmed that Trump will be "watching" the company and said he "has always maintained that Chinese producers will be absorbing the cost of these tariffs."

Trump's reaction will likely influence how other retailers manage their own pricing conversations, the experts said.

"Retailers will have learned they need to be very careful — and it's very tricky — on how they articulate that so as to not wind up on a Truth Social post," Michael Baker, a senior analyst at D.A. Davidson, told BI. "That does add a layer of complication."

He anticipates executives will figure out how to more delicately discuss tariffs on coming earnings calls so as not to anger the president. Walton told BI that other retailers may try to avoid talking about rising costs publicly, and instead let shelf prices speak for themselves.

"President Trump has sent a warning shot that he doesn't like companies talking about price increases related to tariffs," Saunders wrote. "That may make some retailers more hesitant to draw a link, but I don't think it will stop them putting up prices. They will need to financially."

The president has issued not-so-subtle warnings about price hikes before, like when he sharply criticized Amazon for its reported plans to publicize how much tariffs were contributing to rising costs. Amazon said it had no plans to do so on its main site at the time, but experts told BI that the swift reaction sent a "warning signal to other companies" nonetheless.

Though Walmart may be one of the first big box retailers to publicize looming price hikes, it's better positioned to deal with the new tariffs than some competitors. Both Saunders and Baker said the company's scale gives it the ability to offset some of the tariff impact.

• Sen. Bernie Sanders took another swipe at Shari Redstone.
• The former Democratic presidential hopeful was responding to the latest shake-up at CBS News.
• On Monday, CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon announced her resignation.

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday intensified his pressure campaign on Paramount Global's controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, following another major shake-up at CBS News.

CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon on Monday announced that she was stepping down, another bombshell development as its parent company, Paramount, potentially explores a settlement of President Donald Trump's suit against the company and "60 Minutes."

"I say to Shari Redstone: Enough is enough," Sanders wrote on X. "Do not capitulate to Trump's attack on a free press. Do not settle Trump's bogus lawsuit against 60 Minutes."

McMahon wrote in a message to staff that was obtained by Business Insider that it was time for her to "move on and for this organization to move forward with new leadership."

"The past few months have been challenging," she said in the message. "It's become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward."

Paramount declined further comment to Business Insider.

Sanders, an independent from Vermont, has led his colleagues in pressuring Paramount as the company seeks FCC approval of its merger with SkyDance. He and others have expressed skepticism over Paramount's turnabout from fighting Trump's lawsuit against CBS.

Trump sued CBS for $10 billion for what he claimed was deceptive editing of "60 Minutes'" interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 election. Trump later amended his claim to $20 billion in damages and added Paramount to the suit.

First Amendment organizations have dismissed Trump's claims, saying that "60 Minutes" was well within its journalistic rights. In April, The New York Times reported that Paramount's board was discussing a potential settlement.

No deal has yet to be reached.

On May 7, Sanders and eight Senate Democrats wrote to Redstone urging her to "make it clear to President Trump today that Paramount will not surrender to his attack on the First Amendment."

Last month, Bill Owens, the longtime executive producer of "60 Minutes," also bowed out. Scott Pelley, one of the show's longtime correspondents, later expressed his displeasure with the situation on air.

"Stories we've pursued for 57 years are often controversial — lately, the Israel-Gaza war and the Trump administration. Bill made sure they were accurate and fair — he was tough that way," Pelley said during the first "60 Minutes" broadcast that followed Owens' departure. "But our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires."

Netflix and PBS will churn out episodes more quickly than the current streaming model occupied by HBO Max.

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• Lawyer Erik Bolog is a beneficiary of a $10 million "gift" from Claudia Engelhorn, a pharma heir.
• Engelhorn has said the gift was "alcohol induced," while Bolog says it was legitimate.
• Engelhorn is suing Bolog and his ex-firm. The firm says it's caught in the middle.

Claudia Engelhorn, a daughter of a German pharmaceutical tycoon, claims she was duped into handing over $10 million to her former attorney Erik Bolog — and alleges that his former law firm looked the other way while he pocketed the cash.

The heir has been litigating for months against Bolog and the law firm, Whiteford, Taylor & Preston. The dispute is over the "gift" Bolog says she gave him as thanks for helping her win a $130 million case in Monégasque and Swiss courts during the pandemic.

Bolog's defense hinges on a three-page document signed by Engelhorn that says she insisted on making the gift and did so without consulting anyone. "You advised (begged) me to hire independent counsel," the document, which was included in court filings, says. "As you have learned over the past several years, I am not easily discouraged and once I have decided to do something, I do it."

Bolog said in court filings that the gift was legitimate and Engelhorn turned on him after he scolded her for what he said was "a racially hateful statement" that she made at a restaurant. He said she told a Black family "that it was nice that they were allowed to eat in restaurants."

One of Engelhorn's lawyers, Tony Williams, says the heir was "tricked" into signing the gift paperwork when Bolog gave it to her one morning while she was vacationing on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. He called the claim about her remark to a Black family "absolutely false."

In an email to Bolog that was included in court records, Engelhorn wrote: "You took an alcohol induced statement for your benefit." Bolog has claimed in court documents that her story shifted.

Williams also said in a meeting that Engelhorn was on the autism spectrum. "She's not a sophisticated investor," Williams told Business Insider. "She's a woman who has spent her life raising a family, and he should've known that. We did say, with her permission, that she's on the spectrum, and we know that she is, and he knew that."

"The whole thing's meshugganah," said Doug Gansler, one of Bolog's lawyers, using a Yiddish word for craziness. "She's a sophisticated businesswoman. She's not someone who doesn't know what she's doing or understand the value of money."

Engelhorn couldn't be reached for comment. Bolog didn't respond to a request for comment.

The existence of the case, which was filed in Baltimore in September, hasn't previously been reported.

Engelhorn's father, Curt Engelhorn, led a German pharmaceutical company that was sold to the healthcare giant Roche in 1997 for a reported $11 billion. Bolog says she's the "life trustee" of an entity called the Mannheim Trust that has paid her $1 million a year and lent her another $30 million.

Williams, meanwhile, said Bolog vastly overstated Engelhorn's fortune. He said the Mannheim Trust, which Bolog said held $500 million to benefit Engelhorn and others, had been divided among three of her children. Only the money from the Swiss case remains for Engelhorn, Williams said, and it's now "substantially less" than $130 million.

Bolog's former law firm, Whiteford, said it had nothing to do with his dealings. The firm said in a court filing it fired Bolog in May 2023 over issues including how he accounted for expenses. (Gansler denied wrongdoing by his client.)

In her lawsuit, Engelhorn said Whiteford bore some responsibility for Bolog's actions. She said billing records showed that other people at the firm were aware of and contributed to the deception.

The firm said in court filings that the other Whiteford lawyers who appeared to have helped draft the gift paperwork were under the impression that Engelhorn wanted to give a much smaller gift to a member of her staff. They say Bolog edited the documents to reroute the money to himself and his family, something Whiteford said it didn't learn about for two years.

The firm didn't respond to a request for comment.

Gansler is a former Maryland attorney general who's now at the white-shoe firm Cadwalader. Another lawyer for Engelhorn, Wes Henderson, is described on his website as "one of the most experienced and knowledgeable car accident attorneys in Crofton," a sleepy Maryland community of about 30,000 people. He also handles legal malpractice cases, the website says. He declined to comment.

Bolog has had various business interests over the years. His main pursuits have been contingency-fee injury lawsuits and a real estate firm called Tenacity that financed tenant acquisitions of their apartment buildings. In 2005, he was listed in Securities and Exchange Commission records as part of a bank's ownership group.

Gansler said Bolog recently moved to California to do plaintiff-side litigation there.

Bolog has had a colorful legal career. In the late 1990s, he helped a Maryland politician get off with a light sentence after she was accused of hiring a contract killer to whack her husband. The trial ended in a hung jury and she later pled no-contest, according to news reports. He was also among a group of lawyers hoping for a payout from a $120 million judgment against Iraq now pending in the US Supreme Court.

He has had gambling debts, though Gansler said he now has none and had no debt at the time he received Engelhorn's gift. In 2019, Harrah's Philadelphia Casino claimed in a lawsuit that Bolog owed $34,000 for a cash advance, and in 2022, a Caesars casino in Indiana sued him for $45,000. Gansler said that the Caesars lawsuit was filed by mistake. The debts in both cases were several years old, and both lawsuits have been resolved.

Engelhorn has had previous legal issues as well.

In 2007, she agreed to let a revivalist preacher named Tommie Zito and his wife live in a $3.2 million six-bedroom Florida mansion for $300 a month. She claimed that he abused her trust and manipulated her into buying the property and letting his family stay there "for a value far below the property's market value." She sued him twice to try to get out of the deal; both times, she lost.

Zito didn't respond to calls and text messages.

Madeleine O'Neill contributed reporting.

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