Melania Trump has refiled a $150m (£120m) lawsuit against the corporation that publishes the Daily Mail’s website for reporting rumours that she worked as a high-end escort in the 1990s.

Charles Harder, the California attorney who is representing the first lady, argued in the new filing against Mail Media Inc that the article had hurt Trump’s chances of establishing “multimillion-dollar business relationships” during the years in which she would be “one of the most photographed women in the world”.

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Harder was hired by Trump in September to take on Mail Media Inc along with blogger Webster Tarpley from Gaithersburg in Maryland, for reporting the “100% false” rumours that the former model had worked for an escort service. Trump filed the lawsuit in Maryland after both Tarpley and the Daily Mail issued retractions.

But last week, while the lawsuit against Tarpley has been allowed to move ahead, a judge dismissed the filing against the Mail, on the grounds that the corporate entity being sued, Mail Media Inc, is not based in the state of Maryland.

Subsequently, the lawsuit submitted on Monday was filed in New York, where Mail Media Inc has offices. The updated filing said the article published in August caused Trump’s brand to lose significant value as well as major business opportunities that were otherwise available to her.

It stated: “The economic damage to the plaintiff’s brand, and licensing, marketing and endorsement opportunities caused by the publication of Mail Online’s defamatory article, is multiple millions of dollars.

“[The] plaintiff had the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person, as well as a former professional model, brand spokesperson and successful businesswoman, to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multimillion-dollar business relationships for a multi-year term during which plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world.”

Those product categories, it goes on to say, could have included apparel, accessories, jewellery, cosmetics, hair care and fragrance, among others. When asked for comment, Harder told the Guardian the filing was being “misinterpreted”.

“The first lady has no intention of using her position for profit and will not do so. It is not a possibility. Any statements to the contrary are being misinterpreted,” he said.

Harder is one of Hollywood’s top entertainment lawyers, best known for successfully suing Gawker for $140m on behalf of Hulk Hogan last year, after the website posted a clip from the former professional wrestler’s sex tape. Other clients have included the actor Amber Heard and former Fox News chief executive Roger Ailes.



Trump has maintained a relatively low profile since her husband’s inauguration and continues to live in New York, where her son Barron attends school.

The New York suit does not specifically refer to any plan to market products in her name during her tenure as first lady. It does state, however, that the Mail article “impugned her fitness to perform her duties as first lady of the United States” as well as “her duties in business”. It adds that the article caused her “significant humiliation in the community and emotional distress”.



It comes at a time when questions continue to be asked about the ethical implications of the Trump family’s business ventures.

The president has been criticised for failing to fully sever ties to his businesses while in office, with previous ethics advisers to Barack Obama and George W Bush, as well as the leader of the Office of Government Ethics, saying he has not done enough to absolve himself of potential conflicts of interest.

Eyebrows were raised in January when, alongside a biography and list of Melania Trump’s charitable work and interests, the new White House website took the unusual step of providing details of the Slovenian-born first lady’s magazine cover appearances and her jewellery line.

The website originally listed the brand names of Trump’s jewellery lines sold on QVC, but was shortly updated to remove any mention of QVC over concerns it could be seen as an endorsement.

In an interview with the Guardian last autumn, the lawyer explained he was pressing on with the lawsuit because “[The Mail’s apology] came several weeks after they had published their original article, knowing that it was going to be republished by lots of different publications … there were hundreds and hundreds of publications that ended up reporting about this horrible lie that the Daily Mail had perpetuated. The damage had been done.”

Trump also settled her lawsuit against blogger Webster Griffin Tarpley on Tuesday for alleged defamation. In a statement sent out by the first lady’s lawyer, Tarpley has reportedly agreed to pay Trump “a substantial sum as a settlement.”

In an attached retraction, attributed to Tarpley, he wrote: “I posted an article on 2 August, 2016 about Melania Trump that was replete with false and defamatory statements about her. I had no legitimate factual basis to make these false statements and I fully retract them. I acknowledge that these false statements were very harmful and hurtful to Mrs Trump and her family, and therefore I sincerely apologize to Mrs Trump, her son, her husband and her parents for making these false statements.”

With reporting by Ben Jacobs