Melania Trump: A retraction

ON August 20, 2016, we published an article titled ‘Naked photoshoots, and troubling questions about his wife’s past that could derail Trump’.

The article discussed whether allegations being made about Melania Trump could negatively affect her husband Donald Trump’s presidential bid.

Among other things, it noted that allegations have been made in a book available on Amazon about a modelling agency where Mrs Trump worked in Milan being ‘something like a gentleman’s club’, and an article published by Suzy, a Slovenian magazine, alleged that Mrs Trump’s modelling agency in New York, run by Paolo Zampolli, ‘operated as an escort agency for wealthy clients’.

We did not intend to state or suggest that these allegations are true, nor did we intend to state or suggest that Mrs Trump ever worked as an ‘escort’ or in the ‘sex business’. To the contrary, the article explicitly stated that there was no support for the allegations, and it provided adamant denials from Mrs Trump’s spokesperson and from Mr Zampolli. The point of the article was that these allegations could impact the US presidential election even if they are untrue.

Mrs Trump’s counsel in the US and the UK have stated unequivocally that the allegations about the modelling agencies are false. To the extent that anything in our article was interpreted as stating or suggesting that Mrs Trump worked as an ‘escort’ or in the ‘sex business’, that she had a ‘composite or presentation card for the sex business’, or that either of the modelling agencies referenced in the article were engaged in these businesses, it is hereby retracted, and we regret any such misinterpretation.