The Daily Mail has retracted a story suggesting that Donald Trump’s wife Melania Trump might have been an escort, on the same day that Trump filed a lawsuit against the news organization.
In a retraction published Thursday, the Mail stated, “To the extent that anything in the Daily Mail’s article was interpreted as stating or suggesting that Mrs. Trump worked as an ‘escort’ or in the ‘sex business,’ that she had a ‘composite or presentation card for the sex business,’ or that either of the modeling agencies referenced in the article were engaged in these businesses, it is hereby retracted, and the Daily Mail newspaper regrets any such misinterpretation.”
The retraction continued: “The Daily Mail newspaper and MailOnline/DailyMail.com have entirely separate editors and journalistic teams … In so far as MailOnline/DailyMail.com published the same article it wholeheartedly also retracts the above and also regrets any such misinterpretation.”
The Mail also claimed that the article, which drew from claims made in a book and in the Slovenian magazine “Suzy,” “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.’”
“To the contrary, The Daily Mail newspaper article stated that there was no support for the allegations, and it provided adamant denials from Mrs. Trump’s spokesperson and from Mr. [Peter] Zampolli, the operator of a modeling agency where Trump used to work,” the Mail added.
The article contained accusations that models working at Zampolli’s modeling agency “pretended to be models, but they principally earned money as elite escorts.”
In her lawsuit filed Thursday, Trump called the statements in the article, published in August, “false.”
“Plaintiff did legitimate and legal modeling work for legitimate business entities and did not work for any “gentleman’s club’ or ‘escort’ agencies,’” the lawsuit reads. “Plaintiff was not a sex worker, escort or prostitute in any way, shape or form.”