How Much Melania Trump Earned From Daily Mail 'Escort' Allegations Lawsuit? First Lady Accepts Apology In Libel Case

The U.K.’s Daily Mail and Mail Online newspaper has agreed Wednesday to pay damages and costs in order to settle a libel claim that was filed against it by the first lady Melania Trump over an article on their website that claimed Trump once worked as an escort during her professional life as a model.

The article was first published in August 2016 and it claimed that Trump once worked in Milan and New York modeling agencies that also operated as escort agencies. The Daily Mail retracted its article after Trump denied the claims saying that the allegations were "100% false and tremendously damaging to her personal and professional reputation," according to a statement from her lawyer at that time.

According to a source familiar with the settlement, NBC26 reported that the first lady will be paid about $2.9 million in damages and costs. Trump filed her first suit against the Mail Online in September 2016. The suit asked for at least $150 million in damages earlier, however it was later moved from Maryland to New York. The first lady also filed a lawsuit against the Daily Mail in U.K.

The Daily Mail published a retraction and accepted that the allegations were false, Wednesday.

The retraction on their website read: " We accept that these allegations about Mrs Trump are not true and we retract and withdraw them. We apologize 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."

They also mentioned every allegation they had made against the first lady and clarified that they were not true. "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'," the retraction read.

Trump accepted the apology and the damages from the newspaper at London’s High Court, according to reports.

Justice Nicol read an agreed statement in court 14 of royal courts of justice. The statement claimed that the Daily Mail article published in a double page spread in August 2016 included "false and defamatory claims about [Mrs Trump] which questioned the nature of her work as a professional model and republished allegations that she provides services beyond simply modelling."

Another statement, which was read out by solicitor John Kelly, of the law firm Harbottle and Lewis, added: "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."