Back in November, Melania Trump declared that if her husband was elected, her main cause would be the issue of cyberbullying, commenting:
“It is never OK when a 12-year-old girl or boy is mocked, bullied, or attacked. It is terrible when that happens on the playground. And it is absolutely unacceptable when it is done by someone with no name hiding on the internet.”
But it would appear that might be just a line she fed the media. And thanks to a lawsuit Mrs. Trump has filed against the Daily Mail for defamation we know what her real intent was as soon as she became First Lady: Trying to make a buck by hawking her clothing line and fragrances.
Turns out she really is a Trump.
According to court documents obtained by the New York Daily News, Mrs. Trump claims that the story published by the Daily Mail –which alleged she had worked as an escort when first arriving in the United States–resulted in so much financial harm that she can no longer use the cachet of being First Lady to make money. As the lawsuit alleges:
“Plaintiff had the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person…to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multi-million dollar business relationships for a multi-year term during which plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world.
“These product categories would have included, among other things, apparel, accessories, shoes, jewelry, cosmetics, hair care, skin care, and fragrance.”
Mrs. Trump is seeking $150 million in damages from the Daily Mail. The lawsuit was filed in Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday.
Court documents also specifically cite the headline of the Daily Mail story which Mrs. Trump believes harmed her ability to market her products:
“Naked photoshoots, and troubling questions about visas that won’t go away: The VERY racy past of Donald Trump’s Slovenian wife.”
The article also alleged that Mrs. Trump’s modeling career was merely a front for work she did as a paid escort for an agency that had wealthy men as its primary customers.
The newspaper later retracted the story.
The suit against the Daily Mail comes just three days after a Maryland judge tossed a similar claim against the Mail Online due to jurisdictional reason. Another suit is pending against a New York blogger who wrote a story about Mrs. Trump’s allegedly shady past.
The current First Lady is being represented in the defamation suit by Charles Harder, the very same attorney who represented Hulk Hogan and helped win a $140 million verdict against Gawker.
Featured Image Via Flickr Via a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License
