Melania Trump gets apology, damages from Daily Mail over report about her modeling career

British newspaper the Daily Mail has apologized to first lady Melania Trump and paid her an unspecified amount in damages for publishing rumors about Trump’s time as a model and how she met her husband, President Donald Trump.

The paper in August published an article “questioning the nature of work” and republished allegations that “she provided services beyond simply modeling,” according to a joint statement released Wednesday on behalf of the first lady and the newspaper’s parent company.

“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 statement continued.

Then came the mea culpa: “We accept that these allegations about Mrs. Trump are not true and we retract and withdraw them,” the statement said. “We apologise to Mrs. Trump for any distress that our publication caused her.”

The newspaper will pay costs of the lawsuit and damages, and although the statement didn’t say how much, the Associated Press cites a source claiming that the first lady received a total of $2.9 million for this settlement and a previous one with a Maryland blogger.