Melania Trump Settles With Daily Mail Parent Company Over Escort Story

First lady will receive an undisclosed sum and retraction

By Francesca Bacardi Apr 12, 2017 1:43 PMTags
Melania TrumpChip Somodevilla/Getty Images

First Lady Melania Trump has a reason to celebrate.

Trump has settled her defamation lawsuit against Mail Media over a Daily Mail story that insinuated she was an escort shortly after emigrating to the United States. Trump and Mail Media released a joint press release that revealed the media company would be paying the first lady an undisclosed sum as well as giving her a formal apology and retraction.

The first lady sued Mail Media in September 2016 after Daily Mail published an article titled, "Naked photoshoots, and troubling questions about visas that won't go away: The VERY racy past of Donald Trump's Slovenian wife." It cited a Slovenian journalist who co-authored an unauthorized biography of Trump, as well as a Slovenian magazine that claimed the modeling agency Trump worked for was run by a New York entrepreneur who also reportedly operated an escort agency. 

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The Daily Mail's article also alleged Trump and her husband, President Donald Trump, met three years earlier than they claim and "staged" a meeting as a "ruse." Trump hired Charles Harder, the attorney who represented Hulk Hogan in his privacy lawsuit against Gawker Media.

In her lawsuit, which was filed in New York after a Maryland judge ruled it was out of her jurisdiction, Trump claimed she lost business opportunities as a result of the story.

"We accept that these allegations about Mrs Trump are not true and we retract and withdraw them," the publication's parent company said in the statement. "We apologize to Mrs Trump for any distress that our publication caused her. To settle Mrs Trump's two lawsuits against us, we have agreed to pay her damages and costs."

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