Donald Trump’s wife Melania Trump has sued the Daily Mail over insinuations that she may have been an escort.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday, Trump says that an August article in the Daily Mail saying that models at an agency she worked for also worked as escorts inaccurately painted her as a sex worker.
“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.”
“The defamatory statements made in the Daily Mail article were of and concerning Plaintiff, and were attacks on her reputation which discouraged members of the public from having a positive opinion of her,” the libel complaint continues.
The lawsuit goes on to claim that the Mail had doubt over the claims in the story, as they were drawn from an unauthorized book “written by malicious and bitter ‘reporters’ who have never met or spoken to Mrs. Trump.”
According to the complaint, Trump contacted the Mail and asked for a retraction and apology. Days later, the suit claims, the story was pulled from the Daily Mail’s website, but “as of the date of the filing of this Complaint, there has been no retraction of the Daily Mail Article, or an apology.”
The Mail story claimed that Trump worked for a New York modeling agency run by a man who “also operated as an escort agency for wealthy clients.
“On the one hand they [the girls] pretended to be models, but they principally earned money as elite escorts,” the story said, according to the lawsuit.
The suit also names weblog operator Webster Griffin Tarpley as a defendant.
The suit is seeking damages “in an amount in excess of $75,000.”
Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.