Deadline is reporting that The Daily Mail has retracted a story alleging Melania Trump was once an escort. The move came hours after the dubious U.K. newspaper was hit with a $150 million defamation lawsuit filed by Trump, in which her team of lawyers stated that Trump did “legitimate and legal modeling work for legitimate business entities and did not work for any ‘gentleman’s club’ or ‘escort agencies.” The suit also claims that the Daily Mail’s claims could “derail [Donald] Trump,” so let’s hope that’s the case.
The piece, which is no longer available on The Daily Mail’s site, ran 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.” In the story, the paper raised allegations that Melania Trump had worked at a Milan modeling agency that was “something like a gentlemen’s club” and referenced an article in Slovenian magazine Suzy that Trump’s New York modeling agency “operated as an escort agency for wealthy clients.”
It is worth noting that despite the sensational headline, The Daily Mail says the article “stated that there was no support for the allegations” and “provided adamant details for Mrs. Trump’s spokesperson” and from the head of the New York agency. The article’s point, the paper says, was that to show how even false allegations could hurt a candidate’s chances, a lesson that lying liar Donald Trump could probably stand to learn.
In its retraction, The Daily Mail stated that:
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.
There is no word yet on whether the potential first lady will withdraw her suit.