Melania Trump Accepts Damages and Apology From Daily Mail Over False Modeling Claims

The UK's Daily Mail newspaper has apologized to first lady Melania Trump and will pay damages to settle a libel claim after publishing claims about her modeling career.

Trump accepted damages and an apology from the publication at London's High Court on Wednesday, the Guardian and BBC reported. The sum of the damages to be paid was not disclosed.

She had filed her lawsuit in February, seeking $150 million in damages.

The Daily Mail published a full apology on its website.

"The Mail Online website and the Daily Mail newspaper published an article on 20th August 2016 about Melania Trump which questioned the nature of her work as a professional model, and republished allegations that she provided services beyond simply modeling.

"The article included statements that Mrs. Trump denied the allegations and Paulo Zampolli, who ran the modeling agency, also denied the allegations, and the article also stated that there was no evidence to support the allegations. The article also claimed that Mr and Mrs Trump may have met three years before they actually met, and "staged" their actual meeting as a "ruse."

"We accept that these allegations about Mrs Trump are not true and we retract and withdraw them. We apologise to Mrs Trump for any distress that our publication caused her. To settle Mrs Trump's two lawsuits against us, we have agreed to pay her damages and costs."

The libel claim was brought following the publication by the Daily Mail of an article about her during the 2016 presidential election campaign that her husband Donald Trump went on to win.