Melania Trump Threatens to Sue News Outlets
/Donald Trumps wife, Melania has publicly gone silent since the GOP convention.
Trump was called out for lifting parts of Michelle Obama's speech in her own RNC speech and hasn't been heard from since.
But now, Trump's wife is taking a page right out of the old man's playbook and has threaten to sue a number of media companies over stories about her.
Trump has threatened to sue The Daily Mail, Politico and at least eight other news outlets for defamation, her lawyer says.
Trump's lawyer Charles Harder has placed The Daily Mail and other news organizations "on notice... for making false and defamatory statements about her supposedly having been an 'escort' in the 1990s."
CNN reports that in addition, Harder said that he had put Politico on notice for "false and defamatory statements" regarding its reporting on Trump's immigration history. Politico confirmed that its reporters had been sent notices.
The notices come just three days after The Daily Mail, a UK publication, published a report citing a story in a Slovenian magazine that claimed a New York modeling agency that once represented Trump "also operated as an escort agency for wealthy clients." That report was then picked up or referenced by other news outlets.
The outlets that have been put on notice by Melania Trump include The Daily Mail, The Week, Politico, Inquisitr, Tarpley, Before It's News, Liberal America, LawNewz, Winning Democrats and Bipartisan Report, Harder told CNNMoney.
Harder, who also represented Hulk Hogan in his successful defamation suit against Gawker Media, confirmed that the notices should be interpreted as a threat to sue.
Until lawsuits are filed, however, the notices function as warnings to the accused parties to issue a correction or retraction.
"The 'on notice' practice is intended to give the [news outlets] a chance to retract the story and to remove it from their web site," said Richard Epstein, a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and a professor at New York University and the University of Chicago.
Melania has not made any public appearances and Donald Trump has barely mentioned her. The last time Trump talked about his wife on the campaign trail was on August 9th. Donald claimed that there would be a news conference for her to address her immigration status.
That news conference never happened.
Imagine that?