Daily Mail settles libel case with Melania Trump for $2.9 million
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The Daily Mail has agreed to settle two lawsuits with Melania Trump stemming from an August article that claimed the first lady once served as an escort.
The U.K.-based tabloid will pay approximately $2.9 million in damages and legal costs to settle the suits in both the U.S. and the U.K., a source familiar with the settlement told POLITICO.
The settlement ends months of litigation for the two parties after the Daily Mail published an article that included unfounded allegations that Trump had served as a high-end escort in the 1990s. Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against the Daily Mail in September.
Trump was also pursuing a libel case in the U.K., where existing libel laws are known to be less favorable to media outlets and journalists.
“We accept that these allegations about Mrs. Trump are not true and we retract and withdraw them,” Daily Mail said in a statement. “We apologise to Mrs. Trump for any distress that our publication caused her.”
The Daily Mail also apologized for making claims that the model may have met her now-husband Donald Trump years earlier and that the couple staged their first meeting, saying that the claim was not true.
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