Melania Trump's $150M 'High-End Escort' Suit Against Daily Mail Dismissed

ROCKVILLE, MD — A British newspaper that claimed First Lady Melania Trump worked as a high-end paid escort before she married New York businessman, billionaire and now President Donald Trump has been dismissed from a $150 million defamation lawsuit. The Daily Mail also published stories that Melania Trump suffered from a “full-blown nervous breakdown” during the stressful presidential campaign; she has denied all of the tabloid's assertions.

The suit, which claimed that Melania Trump worked as a high-end paid escort before she married Trump, was dismissed on Thursday by a Maryland judge, who ruled the state court lacked jurisdiction to hear a case involving a foreign company, reports BuzzFeed.

However, on Jan. 27, a Montgomery County judge ruled that her $150 million defamation lawsuit against a Clarksburg, Maryland, blogger will continue to trial, saying the blog posts implied she acted as a prostitute. Her lawsuit filed in September 2016 seeks $150 million in damages for the story. Judge Sharon Burrell rejected the blogger's arguments that he had no malice and that Trump's lawsuit was designed to punish comment on a public issue.

"The court believes most people, when they hear the words 'high-end escort' that describes a prostitute. There could be no more defamatory statement than to call a woman a prostitute," Burrell said, reports Politico.

Before marrying Trump, then Melania Knauss worked in Europe and the United States as a model; she has denied the escort claims.

Melania Trump did not attend the Jan. 27 proceedings; she was in the courtroom during a December hearing on the lawsuit.

The first lady sued Clarksburg blogger Webster Tarpley along with the Daily Mail for defamation, The Washington Post says. Both publications later retracted their stories. Tarpley has said that he did not libel Melania Trump and was only passing on “unfounded rumors and innuendo” that had appeared online.

“Melania Trump’s lawsuit against me is without merit,” Tarpley says on his website. “Mrs. Trump is a public figure actively engaged in the Trump for president campaign. We are confident that Mrs. Trump will not be able to meet her high burden of proving the statements published about her on my website were defamatory in any way. Her lawsuit is a blatant attempt to intimidate not only me, but journalists of all stripes into remaining silent with regard to public figures. This lawsuit is a direct affront to First Amendment principles and free speech in our democratic society.”

Her attorney, Charles Harder, said in a statement when the lawsuits were filed: “These defendants made several statements about Mrs. Trump that are 100 percent false and tremendously damaging to her personal and professional reputation [and] broadcast their lies to millions of people throughout the US and the world – without any justification.”

Harder, a Beverly Hills, California-based lawyer, triumphed in court in August in a massive lawsuit on behalf of wrestling star Hulk Hogan. The win sent Gawker Media into bankruptcy; the lawsuit was financed by billionaire Peter Thiel, a Trump supporter and foe of Gawker since it outed him as gay, Forbes says.

First ladies typically take up a social cause to champion while they are in the White House; former First Lady Michelle Obama advocated for better eating habits to combat childhood obesity. Melania Trump has said that her focus when her husband, a regular Twitter user, takes office will be to fight bullying on social media and to advocate for women.

In a November speech, she called for an end to online bullying of children and teenagers, saying, "Our culture has gotten too mean and too rough especially to children and to teenagers. We have to find a better way to talk to each other, to disagree with each other, to respect each other."

After the inauguration festivities, Trump returned to New York with son Barron, who will finish his school year there.

»Image via Mark Nozell, Flickr, used under Creative Commons