From BBC News
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| Melania Trump |
Melania Trump is suing a British newspaper and a US blogger for $150m (£114m) over allegations that she was a sex worker in the 1990s, her lawyer says.
The Daily Mail suggested
Mrs Trump may have worked as a part-time escort in New York, and met
husband Donald Trump, who is now running for the White House, earlier
than previously reported.
The claims were "outright lying", lawyer Charles Harder said.
Both the blogger and the Daily Mail have since retracted their articles.
"These defendants made several statements about Mrs Trump that are
100% false and tremendously damaging to her personal and professional
reputation," Mr Harder said in a statement.
"Defendants' actions
are so egregious, malicious and harmful to Mrs Trump that her damages
are estimated at $150m," Mr Harder's statement said.
He has filed the complaint before the Circuit Court for Montgomery County in the US state of Maryland.
The
document states that Melania Trump asks the court to rule against all
defendants "in an amount in excess of Seventy Five Thousand Dollars
($75,000) in compensatory and punitive damages".
There has been no explanation of the discrepancy.
Mrs Trump, 46, was born in Slovenia and moved to the US to work as a model in the 1990s. She married Mr Trump in 2005.
The blogger, Webster Tarpley had written that Mrs Trump feared her past becoming public.
The article on the Daily Mail's website quoted claims published in
Slovenian magazine Suzy that the modelling agency Mrs Trump was working
for also functioned as an escort agency, court papers show.
The
newspaper also quoted Slovenian journalist Bojan Pozar, author of an
unauthorised biography, who claimed Mrs Trump had posed for nude photos
in New York in 1995 and alleged that she had met Mr Trump that year,
three years before their reported first meeting in 1998.
Her lawyers say she moved to the US in 1996.
Mr
Tarpley meanwhile alleged that Mrs Trump was "reportedly obsessed by
fear of salacious revelations by wealthy clients from her time as a
high-end escort" and had suffered a "full-blown nervous breakdown".
The
Daily Mail's retraction, published late on Thursday, insisted it had
not suggested the sex work claims were true but said that, even if
false, they could affect the US presidential campaign.
In July,
Mrs Trump was embroiled in a row over plagiarism, after her speech at
the Republican convention. Lines matched almost word for word those
delivered by First Lady Michelle Obama at the Democrats' convention in
2008.
An employee of the Trump Organisation, Meredith McIver,
later admitted her role in writing the speech, saying it was her
mistake.
Attached:Melania Trump's complaint
Culled from: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37253025
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