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Melania Trump lawsuit says she planned to launch product line as first lady

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First lady Melania Trump’s libel lawsuit against a newspaper says she planned to launch a “broad-based commercial brand,” potentially during her time in the White House.

Trump on Monday refiled a $150 million libel lawsuit against the Daily Mail after the suit was previously dismissed in Maryland on judicial grounds.

The suit claims an article in the Daily Mail alleging Trump had once worked for an escort service caused her brand to lose “significant value” and subsequently ruined her “unique, once in a lifetime opportunity” to “launch a broad-based commercial brand.”

The Washington Post first reported the details of the lawsuit Monday night.

{mosads}The lawsuit does not specifically say that Trump planned to launch such a brand while first lady. It did claim the article hurt her reputation just as she began a “multi-year term” of higher publicity.

The suit also claims the Daily Mail piece “impinged her fitness to perform her duties as First Lady of the United States.”

“Plaintiff had the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person, as well as a former professional model and brand spokesperson, and successful businesswoman, to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multi-million dollar business relationships for a multi-year term during which Plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world,” the suit said.

The lawsuit targets the Daily Mail for a story that claimed Trump worked for an escort service in the 1990s. The article was later retracted after Trump filed the first lawsuit in Maryland.

In an interview with the Post, Richard Painter, who served as a White House ethics counsel to former President George W. Bush, criticized Trump for potentially hoping to profit off of her tenure as first lady.

“There has never been a first lady of the United States who insinuated that she intended to make a lot of money because of the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunity of being first lady,” Painter told the Post.

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