Melania Trump 2019: Why a British Publication Paid FLOTUS ‘Substantial Damages’

The First Lady of the United States, Melania Trump, has been going after various news outlets for running stories that her camp claims are riddled with inaccurate details. And, earlier this year, she won over the British paper the Daily Telegraph which promised to pay Mrs. Trump “substantial damages.”

In late January, the said publication issued a public apology only a week after they published the article titled “The mystery of Melania.” The Telegraph wrote, “We apologise unreservedly to The First Lady and her family for any embarrassment caused by our publication of these allegations. As a mark of our regret we have agreed to pay Mrs. Trump substantial damages as well as her legal costs.”

The feature report, which has since been deleted from the Telegraph’s domain, was written by American journalist and writer Nina Burleigh. Town & Country magazine reported that the article published online was based on Burleigh’s 2018 book “Golden Handcuffs: The Secret History of Trump's Women.” It appears that legal representatives of Mrs. Trump have reached out to the Telegraph and it was asked, “to make clear that the article contained a number of false statements.” The paper also admitted that it “should not have been published” in the first place.

Part of the public apology is apparently publishing corrections on the details written in the infamous article. The Telegraph retracted the story’s claims that Mrs. Trump’s father, Viktor Knavs, was “a fearsome presence.” The allegation that the FLOTUS dropped out from the University due to an issue in completing an examination was also recanted.

The deleted article also claimed that Mrs. Trump was not doing good in her modeling career when she met Donald Trump and the latter helped boost her career. “Mrs. Trump was a successful professional model in her own right before she met her husband and obtained her own modeling work without his assistance,” the Telegraph wrote in its apology letter.