Just when you thought the 2016 presidential election couldn’t get any more ridiculous, Melania Trump is now threatening to sue the U.K’s Daily Mail — and any other publication that follows the paper’s lead — for an article that looked into whether she worked as a high-paid escort during her modeling days.

Melania Trump’s lawyer, Charles Harder, told TheWrap in an email on Monday: “Mrs. Trump has placed several news organizations on notice of her legal claims against them, including Daily Mail among others, for making false and defamatory statements about her supposedly having been an ‘escort’ in the 1990s.”

Harder, who also represented Hulk Hogan in his successful lawsuit against Gawker, went on to say: “All such statements are 100% false, highly damaging to her reputation, and personally hurtful. She understands that news media have certain leeway in a presidential campaign, but outright lying about her in this way exceeds all bounds of appropriate news reporting and human decency. “

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The brouhaha began on Friday after the Daily Mail published an article titled, “Naked photoshoots, and troubling questions about visas that won’t go away: The VERY racy past of Donald Trump’s Slovenian wife.” The article dug up past claims that Melania Trump used to be a high-class hooker, without asserting that they were factual.

The article cited what it said was a book called “From The Whore House To The White House: The True Story Of Melania Trump.” The Daily Mail admitted it “could find no trace of the book’s author,” identified as Adam Schlecter. But it quoted the book saying a modeling agency Melania Trump worked for in Milan was “something like a gentleman’s club.”

The Mail also cited a magazine article from her home country, Slovenia, that claimed Melania’s modeling agency in New York, run by New York entrepreneur, Paolo Zampolli, also operated as an escort agency for rich clients. The article said some models would offer two business cards — one for modeling, and one for sex.

The Mail said the author of the magazine piece stood by his reporting but refused to corroborate his claims.

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The paper did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Inquisitr and BipartisanReport issued retractions. The outlets apologized for repeating the accusations.



“We deeply regret reporting on a story of such a ‘low brow’ nature,” Bipartisan wrote. And The Inquisitor said that while its writers “did not generate said rumors, which alleged Melania Trump previously earned money as an escort, the writer in question was not diligent in fact-checking or maintaining a healthy distance between innuendo and fact.”



Earlier this month, the New York Post released nude photos of Melania Trump from early in her modeling career.

Remember the more innocent days of the campaign, when nude photos of the potential first lady still felt kind of shocking?

Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.