On Media Blog Archives Select Date… December, 2015 November, 2015 October, 2015 September, 2015 August, 2015 July, 2015 June, 2015 May, 2015 April, 2015 March, 2015 February, 2015 January, 2015

Getty Maryland blogger settles defamation lawsuit brought by Melania Trump

A Maryland blogger has settled a defamation lawsuit filed by first lady Melania Trump.

Webster Griffin Tarpley, who runs the blog Tarpley.net, has agreed to pay a “substantial sum” and issued a statement apologizing to the first lady and her family, according to a statement from Trump's attorneys. In August, Tarpley published unsubstantiated rumors that the first lady had previously been an “escort” and that she was suffering a “nervous breakdown” because of the presidential campaign.

“I posted an article on August 2, 2016 about Melania Trump that was replete with false and defamatory statements about her,” reads Tarpley’s statement. “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.”

In August, Tarpley had issued a retraction stating that the blog did not generate the rumors but should have maintained “a healthy distance between innuendo and fact.”

In September, Trump filed a libel suit for $150 million against both Tarpley and the U.K.-based Mail Media, the parent company of the Daily Mail, after putting several websites on notice for publishing the allegations. In late January, a Maryland judge dismissed the suit against the Daily Mail, saying the site should not be sued in Maryland, but ruled that the case against Tarpley could go forward.

“The court believes most people, when they hear the words ‘high-end escort’ that describes a prostitute,” Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Sharon Burrell ruled. “There could be no more defamatory statement than to call a woman a prostitute.”

A trial had been scheduled for November.

Trump is still fighting the Mail, which published similar rumors and has since retracted them. On Monday, Trump refiled the libel lawsuit against Mail Media in New York state Supreme Court, arguing that the Mail’s publication of the rumors damaged her ability to make “multimillion dollar business relationships” and other “major business opportunities” during her time as first lady.

Trump is being represented by lawyer Charles Harder, who represented professional wrestler Hulk Hogan in the widely publicized invasion-of-privacy suit against Gawker Media that led to the company’s bankruptcy and the shutdown of Gawker.com.

