Melania Trump filed a $150 million dollar defamation lawsuit against London’s The Daily Mail tabloid and the American blog Tarpley after they reported that she worked for an escort agency servicing wealthy clients in her native Slovenia.
The UK’s Daily Mail wasted no time issuing an apology to America’s potential first lady after the lawsuit was filed Thursday in a Maryland state court.
The Daily Mail issued a statement Thursday, saying “it wholeheartedly” retracted the story “and also regrets any such misinterpretation.”
The statement continued, “The article… did not intend to state or suggest that these allegations are true, nor did it intend to state or suggest that Mrs. Trump ever worked as an ‘escort’ or in the ‘sex business”.
The tabloid admitted there was “no support for the allegations” in the story which it picked up from a Slovenian magazine.
Melania’s lawyer, Charles Harder, issued a statement, saying the defendants’ “egregious” actions were “tremendously damaging to her personal and professional reputation”.
“Their many lies include, among others, that Mrs. Trump supposedly was an ‘escort’ in the 1990s before she met her husband. Defendants’ actions are so egregious, malicious and harmful to Mrs. Trump that her damages are estimated at $150 million dollars.”
Harder is the same lawyer who represented disgraced wrestler Hulk Hogan in a successful defamation lawsuit that permanently shuttered the Gawker.com blog.
Mrs. Trump is a favored target of the mainstream media who can’t find any mud to sling on her husband, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
