An outraged Melania Trump filed a $150 million lawsuit Thursday against The Daily Mail for publishing a story that repeated claims she had worked as a paid escort in the 1990s.
Trump’s defamation suit said The Daily Mail, which operates a newspaper in England and a global website, maliciously circulated the false report, according to CNN.
The suit also named Tarpley, a U.S. blog, for repeating the allegations, court papers show.
“These defendants made several statements about Mrs. Trump that are 100% false and tremendously damaging to her personal and professional reputation,” Trump’s lawyer said in a statement, according to CNN.
Melania Trump, 46, is the third wife of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. The two married in 2005.
Not long after news of the lawsuit emerged, The Daily Mail issued a retraction of its Aug. 20 story that ran in print and online. The news outlet said its reports were based on allegations made in a book “available on Amazon” that an Italian agency where Trump worked doubled as “gentlemen’s club,” and an article in Suzy, a Slovenian magazine, that Trump’s New York agency also functioned as an escort service.
“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 statement said.
The allegations were “hereby retracted, and the Daily Mail newspaper regrets any such misinterpretation,” it concluded.
Harder, the attorney representing Melania Trump, successfully sued Gawker Media on behalf of ex-wrestler Hulk Hogan, who won a $140 million award in his invasion-of-privacy case.
The lawsuit bankrupted Gawker Media and led to the shuttering of its flagship site, Gawker.
