Things You Most Likely Didn't Know About Melania Trump

Political Blogger Is Predicting Melania Trump Will Lose Her Defamation Lawsuits

A Maryland political blogger predicts Melania Trump will lose his libel suit against him after he accused her of working as a professional escort in the 1990s.
Melania Trump, wife of presidential candidate Donald Trump, filed suit in Montgomery County (Maryland) Circuit Court. It seeks $ 150 million in damages against Webster Tarplay and the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, according to a report by The Legal Forum

Tarplay said on her website that Trump was suffering a mental breakdown because she feared her wealthy escort clients of the 1990s would say something that embarrassed her during her husband's presidential campaign.

Tarplay and the Daily Mail later retracted their stories, but Trump says the damage is done after complaints were repeated by news organizations around the world. His lawyer said the allegations represented false rumors and tremendously damaging.

Tarplay issued a statement saying that Trump was wasting his time if he continued with the lawsuit.
Melania Trump's claim against me has no merit, Tarplay said. Ms. Trump is a public figure who is actively involved in the Trump for President campaign. We are sure that Ms. Trump will not be able to meet your high burden of proving the statements posted about her on my website are defamatory in any way. His demand is a blatant attempt to intimidate not only me, but journalists from all bands to remain silent with regard to public figures. This demand is a direct affront to the principles of the First Amendment and freedom of expression in our democratic society.

The suit seems to depend on the court's interpretation of true malice, which means that journalists knew, or should have known, that something they published was false.

The Royal Standard of Malice began to shield journalists from inaccuracies with the 1964 New York Times Co. Supreme Court case against Sullivan. The ruling was the result of a lawsuit by a Alabama city commissioner who was accused in a newspaper article of racist behavior toward black civil rights activists.

A wholly white jury awarded the city commissioner a $ 500,000 ruling, but the Supreme Court overturned it.

Judge William Brennan wrote to the Court that journalistic errors were inevitable in free debate.

A higher priority is a deep national commitment to the principle that the debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and openly open, and which may include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials, he wrote Brennan.

As a result, the 1st and 14th amendments require proof of actual malice for defamation trials by high profile figures to succeed.

Sullivan's case focused on elected officials, but later Supreme Court cases extended the standard of royal malice to a variety of public figures, which could include Melania Trump.