U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday met with Akie Abe, the widow of assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump’s wife said.

The Trumps are believed to have hosted a private dinner for Akie Abe at the resort in Palm Beach, Florida, with Melania Trump posting an image to her X social media account of the three standing together smiling.

“It was a privilege to host Mrs. Akie Abe at Mar-a-Lago once again,” she wrote. “We fondly remembered her late husband, former Prime Minister Abe, and honored his remarkable legacy.”

Further details of the meeting were not immediately clear.

The dinner is the first known instance of a Japanese national meeting with the incoming U.S. leader following his victory in the Nov. 5 presidential election.

Abe’s meeting has raised some eyebrows for coming before that of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who was unable to meet Trump last month despite reportedly making a number of requests.

Trump’s team said at the time that no meetings with foreign leaders would take place before his January inauguration, citing the Logan Act, which bars private citizens from negotiating diplomatic matters with foreign governments.

However, in the weeks that followed, Trump has met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Japanese officials have said they are working to arrange a meeting between Ishiba and Trump “as soon as possible.”

Shinzo Abe, who was gunned down in 2022 while giving a campaign speech, was the first foreign leader to meet Trump after his stunning 2016 election defeat of Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, with the Japanese prime minister traveling to Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York, where he presented Trump with a $3,755 gold golf club as a gift.

That meeting was the first step in a relationship between the two leaders that helped Tokyo weather some of Trump’s unorthodox — and at times transactional — approach to the U.S.-Japan alliance.

Soon after Abe announced he would be stepping down due to a chronic illness in 2020, Trump called him his “closest friend” over the telephone, and “the greatest Prime Minister in the history of Japan” in a tweet posted shortly after the call.

On his Truth Social platform, Trump in 2022 lamented the former prime minister's assassination that year.

“Few people know what a great man and leader Shinzo Abe was, but history will teach them and be kind. He was a unifier like no other, but above all, he was a man who loved and cherished his magnificent country, Japan,” he wrote. “Shinzo Abe will be greatly missed. There will never be another like him!”