Daily Mail Retracts Article About Melania Trump After She Files $150 Million Defamation Suit
Apologizes for any misinterpretation
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has a reputation of leveraging legal force against anyone who speaks detrimentally of himself or his family.
The Daily Mail posted an article about Melania Trump’s racy photoshoots, visa issues, and posited her scantily clad photo spreads might have a bearing on the upcoming November election.
In response, Melania Trump filed a hefty $150 million defamation suit against The Daily Mail and threatened suit against Maryland-based blog, Tarply for allegedly suggesting she was once employed by an escort service.
From the LA Times:
Melania Trump is suing the Daily Mail and Maryland-based blog Tarpley for $150 million, claiming defamation related to reports that she once worked for an escort service.
Trump, represented by Hulk Hogan’s former lawyer Charles Harder, threatened last week to sue several news organizations over the reports. The first to publish the allegation was Slovenian outlet Suzy magazine, which the Daily Mail cited.
Harder’s statement reads: “These defendants made several statements about Mrs. Trump that are 100% false and tremendously damaging to her personal and professional reputation.”
Tarpley retracted its report last week after being threatened with the lawsuit. After Trump filed her lawsuit on Thursday, The Daily Mail retracted their original report stating, “The Daily Mail newspaper article stated that there was no support for the allegations … The point of the article was that these allegations could impact the U.S. presidential election even if they are untrue.”
Thursday evening, The Daily Mail removed and retracted the article. Further, they apologized for any misinterpretation that led readers to believe Mrs. Trump was, “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.”
On August 20, 2016, an article was published in the Daily Mail newspaper titled ‘Racy photos, and troubling questions about his wife’s past that could derail Trump.’
The article discussed whether allegations being made about Melania Trump could negatively affect her husband Donald Trump’s presidential bid. Among other things, the article noted that allegations have been made in a book available on Amazon about a modeling agency where Mrs. Trump worked in Milan being ‘something like a gentleman’s club,’ and an article published by Suzy, a Slovenian magazine, alleged that Mrs. Trump’s modeling agency in New York, run by Paolo Zampolli, ‘operated as an escort agency for wealthy clients.’
The article, which was also published online by the Mailonline/DailyMail.com website under the headline ‘Naked photoshoots, and troubling questions about visas that won’t go away: The VERY racy past of Donald Trump’s Slovenian wife’ 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. Zampolli.
The point of the article was that these allegations could impact the U.S. presidential election even if they are untrue.
Mrs. Trump’s counsel in the U.S. and the U.K., have stated unequivocally that the allegations about the modeling agencies are false.
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 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 Trump’s defamation claims might be a bit viewed a bit more credibly if not for Trump’s own history of insinuating oddities. Ted Cruz blamed Donald Trump for the National Enquirer story which alleged he had numerous affairs. “For Donald J. Trump to enlist his friends at the National Enquirer and his political henchmen to do his bidding shows you that there is no low Donald won’t go,” Cruz wrote. Trump insinuated Sen. Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, and threatened to “spill the beans,” on Sen. Cruz’s wife, Heidi.
Follow Kemberlee on Twitter @kemberleekaye
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
It’s so refreshing how the Trump family doesn’t take any crap from the media. Example: Mr. Trump refused to fly any media hacks with him to Mexico on Trump 1. Like Ayn Rand wrote: “Never support your enemies.”
I do appreciate that much about him.
That’s all?
I have to point to daily reports from Morning Joe. Trump is American media’s current favorite punching bag and they promoted him into this position during the primaries.
I am surprised Rags hasn’t dropped by and left his usual anti-Trump comment yet!
Along with EdgeoftheLitterbox.
She was lapping this up and spreading it around as if it were gospel truth.
How do you know it isn’t? The suit was in the UK, where there is no Sullivan, and it’s easy for a public figure to win a defamation suit. So the retraction has to be taken with at least a grain of salt.
I’ve read the article; all it did was report on others’ reporting and publish some very real pictures of Melania’s illegal ho-hum work in New York.
I find it highly problematic that Trump threw his weight around to get them to shut up. He does have a questionable relation to the First Amendment. One reason to oppose Trump presidency is to stop his anti-free speech agenda because he does want to pass similar laws in the United States.
The suit is filed in state court in Montgomery County, Maryland. Trump’s not afraid of no stinking Sullivan.
You’re right. That detail was left out of most reporting.
What, that Melania was a porn star?
I really think you need to seek professional help for your TDS, Kaye.
Seriously. Daily Mail prints essentially gossip with ZERO facts to back it up that she worked for an escort agency.
And your opening line is, “Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has a reputation of leveraging legal force against anyone who speaks detrimentally of himself or his family.” ??? SERIOUSLY??
How about “Trump sues paper for printing malicious lies about his wife”.
They failed to fact check their story and thought they could get away with printing lies by adding a disclaimer that there was no facts to back it up.
Unsurprisingly they are being called on their bullshit.
I check out DM every day, since they have narratives from around the world. From what I understand, most of its writers are Left-Wing (both in UK and USA), but I stay away from their “junk” stories. If I make a conservative comment about one of their articles, they OFTEN will not print that comment. I hope and pray they have to pay damages to Melania.
I personally think the way Trump treated Cruz and his family was shameful and showed a lack of character. I also think the article about Melania and especially the non-apology was disgusting. So do two wrongs make a right?
Of course not. Within five minutes of finishing the article last week, I had already sent an article to the web site’s advertising company asking them if they really wanted to be associated with this trash.
It did help that the site was called “liberalamerica.com” and had ads from corporate sponsors like Jeep, Mitsubishi, Equinox Gym, etc, who probably had no idea that their billion dollar brands were appearing next to an article calling the Republican nominee’s wife a whore. I am surprised that the site wasn’t in the complaint since it did get memeorandum placement for at least several hours.
The Fourth Estate’s integrity is on trial.
The fourth estate HAS no integrity.
If it did, we would not have the choice between bad and worse this election.
What was once known as the fourth estate became the fifth column long ago.
Between you and Mark Finklestein copying and pasting left wing rags verbatim and without comment just what point is there in reading this blog?
Why was the last paragraph part of this post? It seems to have nothing to do with the overall story.
If Cruz had challenged the Enquirer and the latter backed down, then perhaps. Then it would be like Trump matter.
Otherwise, where is the nexus?
There was no rational reason to include that last paragraph. Its TDS of the author unless she was trying to point out that Cruz never sued so maybe the affairs and Lee Harvey Oswald and his Daddy stuff was true. Cruz also dropped out of race almost immediately after Lee Harvey Oswald and his daddy stuff came out.
Cruz didn’t sue because he’s a public figure, and in the USA such a suit would have no chance at all.
Trump sues people anyway, or threatens them, even knowing he can’t win, because he’s a vicious evil person who abuses the legal system as a weapon, which is illegal and unethical, but in states without a SLAPP law he gets away with it.
The UK is a completely different cricket match.
The nexus is that Trump routinely slings the vilest defamation at other people, and also abuses the legal process by suing people, or threatening to do so, just to hit them with the expense of defending themselves.
And as a warning to others. Say something “horrible,” and you, too, will be slapped with a frivolous lawsuit.
The defamation laws in Europe are different from the US. In Europe, failure to file suit can be freely taken as an admission that a story is true.
Funny isn’t it how the mfm is going in to over drive to protect HRC and Huma by saying how inappropriate it us to attack either of them but doesn’t hesitate to attack Trump or his wife or his kids.
Secondly, Kaye you need to get over herself. Like it or lump it Trump IS your republican candidate. There is nothing you can do to change that so the only thing you should be doing is getting behind your guy 110% because if he doesn’t get elected your country is screwed!
Mailman
If you think Kaye’s job is to be the GOP’s errand girl then you’re delusional. The GOP made it very clear that they didn’t need conservatives to win this time around now that they had their superstar candidate who could win New York, New Jersey, Illinois, etc. (I’m being literal here, Trump stood in front of a bunch of GOP Senators in early July, including Jeff Flake and vowed to carry Illinois.)
So here we are in early September, and Hillary is +19 in Illinois, +18 in New York, +13 in New Jersey, etc etc and now it turns the GOP really does need us. Thus now we get a parade of scolds telling us it’ll be all our fault if Hillary wins and bullying and begging us to be the last people on board a ship of fools that we told you ten months ago never had any hope of staying afloat, much less going anywhere. We couldn’t help you at this point even if we wanted to.
It will be your fault if you don’t vote because you believed the mfm polls and HRC ends up getting elected.
On the other hand, given her apparent health issues she might be lucky to survive to November anyways 🙂
Mailman
Even if Trump were even in the polls, everything I wrote would still stand. He was never supposed to be even or behind, he was supposed to dominate by turning traditionally blue states red. McCain ran even and even ahead of Obama for weeks until the financial crisis. Trump has never been ahead. Not once.
And its easy to understand why, he’s an inexperienced, undisciplined candidate that can’t go a week without picking a fight with another Republican or contradicting himself. He’s the opposite of Romney in all the wrong ways. Although they do have almost identical immigration plans.
But the polls lie, right? Says who? Trump? Bannon? Fox News? (Except Fox News own poll has Clinton up +6.) Since I’m sure they’re not the type to make claims with no evidence, maybe we can review their data that explains how dozens of independent state and national polls are wrong in the exact same way and what the “real” numbers are now.
He’s never been ahead? Better check that one out. He’ll never be ahead? Did you get that straight from Nostradamus? Actually, I agree. I see Cruz pulling it out with a big last minute kick.
In August, RCP has 24 polls. Trump is +1 in exactly one, and ties in one other. The other 22 have Clinton ahead from +1 to +10. On average, Clinton is ahead by about +5. At this time in 2012, Romney, who Trump called a “failed candidate” had cut Obama’s lead to 3 points.
And please don’t bring up that late July poll – the USC-LA Times poll that had Trump at +7 which he then tweeted to all his followers and headed out for his victory lap. Three days later it fell out of the RCP average and he was down 5 points and back where he started. And now we all know it wasn’t a normal cross-sectional poll at all, but some kind of long-term tracking survey.
Your gal may just pull this off, and that by using post-concussive amnesia as the main plank in her platform. This must be an exciting time for you.
“The point of the article was that these allegations could impact the U.S. presidential election even if they are untrue.”
With a mewling, mealy-mouthed excuse like that, Ms. Trump should proceed with her plan to kick them right where it hurts—in their wallets.
The Trumps use the tools which are legally available to them. They do not use the tools which are not legally available. We have yet to hear tales of long strings of dead bodies littering their career paths. And, in the decayed state of modern American politics, I have to consider that a big plus.
Lawsuits that the plaintiff knows to be frivolous are not “legally available”. Filing them for the purpose of imposing legal costs on the defendant is an abuse of process and a violation of the law, even if nobody is ever prosecuted for it. And Trump does this all the time.
This whole “Trump family” thing has an odor about it. Donald, as hero of the commoner, has been wearing his brightest orange makeup and Ivanka and husband Jared Kushner took off for some inexpensive vacation in Croatia with Vladimir Putin’s girlfriend Wendy Deng, and then moved to another yacht owned by a deep-pockets Hillary supporter.
Then there is all the attention-getting actions by Melania (or should I say Melanjia) such as using Moochelle’s speech inside her own and the Melania nudies released by the The New York Post owned by Trump supporter Rupert Murdoch. Now the law suit.
So “any publicity is good” and “once an elite, always an elite” jump off the page. And the Country Class gets bigger holes in their socks.
Hahahahahhahahaa….riiiiiiiight. So the Mrs Trump is attention seeking even though she has only had one speech?
Im assuming even your limited intellect can work this one out gad-fly?
Mailman
Trump is an attention-seeker. I don’t think Melania wanted any of it, I don’t think she wanted him to run, probably because her past will come up — and it did, as it should.
Now I know why you call yourself “mailman,” because you obviously are incapable of reading English. Next time, if I really want you to read what I write, perhaps I will try Croatian.
Interesting how the media will print a thinly-sourced rumor about candidate wife Melania Trump’s alleged whoring, yet the same media pointedly ignores candidate Hillary Clinton’s actual whoring, which has cost U.S. taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars (at a minimum), harmed poor people (just ask the Haitians), and endangered U.S. national security.
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/09/02/nyt-state-gave-foundation-donor-access-hillary-exchange-private-jet-ride-bill/
“The media” reportage is the only way by which we know of any of the Hellary crimes. And they are crimes.
By the same token, I have never taken anything printed in the Daily Mail seriously (which is to say “at face value”).
Just as an aside, in the American civil law system, a defense against a lawsuit for defamation is that nobody reasonable would believe the defaming statements.
Heh…!!!
No argument that Hillary Clinton’s crimes are crimes, but you’ll learn far more information about those crimes watching Dinesh D’Souza’s movie or going to Judicial Watch’s website than you’ll learn from any reporting by the mainstream media.
Just more of the same. Attack Trump and family anyway you can.
Destroy him and his campaign. He will not be allowed to be elected president!
Crooked Hillary has been given the keys to the White House.
She is bought and paid for!
R-I-G-G-E-D S-Y-S-T-E-M!
Sure, that’s the way libel law works. Say your sorry after your sued and those yucky damages go away. Going to be an expensive adventure for these particular fish wrappers.
“The point of the article was that these allegations could impact the U.S. presidential election even if they are untrue.”
That is exactly the reason the Daily Mail published the article in the first place. Do you see any DM articles about Clinton’s emails or the Clinton Foundation allegations or Clinton’s links to multiple deaths? They, too, could impact the elections, even if untrue. Yet, only stories that could negatively impact Trump are published.
The Daily Mail knew exactly what it was doing. t put the story out knowing it probably wasn’t true and once the damage was done, they retracted. But the lie already made its impact.
Another thread where the nevertrump group shows they side with the left.
Trying to reconcile their cognitive dissonance by dehumanizing the #neverhillary faction.