Yahoo Sports Melania Trump Settles Defamation Lawsuit
First Lady Melania Trump has won damages from the Daily Mail over the British newspaper's allegations that Trump worked as an "escort."
The first lady will receive approximately $2.9 million in a settlement, according to CNN (she had been seeking $150 million), and the newspaper retracted its August 20, 2016 article titled, “Racy photos, and troubling questions about his wife’s past that could derail Trump.” The article allegedly insinuated that a modeling agency Trump worked for in the 1990s was also an escort service..
"We accept that these allegations about Mrs. Trump are not true and we retract and withdraw them. We apologize to Mrs. Trump for any distress that our publication caused her," a lawyer for the newspaper told a judge in London.
In late February, Trump dropped a section of filed earlier that month containing controversial language that mentioned her potential financial gains through her position as first lady, a move that had drawn broad criticism of what appeared to be her using her new position for profit.
According to BuzzFeed, Trump's lawsuit was adapted to focus on emotional distress, not financial losses. The mention of a "unique, once in a lifetime opportunity" to "launch a broad-based commercial brand" during a time when she "is one of the most photographed women in the world" was removed.
The amended lawsuit cited a February interaction in which New York Times reporter Jacob Bernstein allegedly told model Emily Ratajkowski that Trump was "a hooker," WWD reports. After Ratajkowski posted an account of the experience on Twitter, the first lady thanked her. (Bernstein apologized, also on Twitter.)
As the Washington Post and the New York Post report, the suit filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan by Charles Harder, who represented Hulk Hogan in his Peter Thiel-backed $140 million verdict against Gawker Media, claimed that "Mail Online's conduct was extreme and outrageous in falsely making the scurrilous charge that the future First Lady of the United States worked as a prostitute."
The initial suit contended that the false accusation caused Trump's brand, Melania, to lose "significant value." The First Lady's brand would have included, "apparel accessories, shoes, jewelry, cosmetics, hair care, skin care and fragrance," the suit read.
This was the third suit of its type Trump has filed against the Daily Mail; a Maryland judge dismissed a similar claim against the publication for jurisdictional reasons.
To be sure, the suit never claimed that first lady would start these businesses while in the White House, but it did state that the article "impugned her fitness to perform her duties as First Lady of the United States" and caused her "significant humiliation in the community and emotional distress."
Harder told the Guardian that the initial claims in the suit had been misinterpreted. "The First Lady has no intention of using her position for profit and will not do so. It is not a possibility. Any statements to the contrary are being misinterpreted," he said.
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