Melania Trump secures apology from HarperCollins UK over false claim Epstein introduced her to Trump

The statement, posted to social media by the First Lady, read, "HarperCollins UK recently published a book by Andrew Lownie titled Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York. We have, in consultation with the author, removed passages of the book that referenced unverified claims about the First Lady of the United States Melania Trump. Copies of the book that include those references are being permanently removed from distribution."

The statement added, "HarperCollins UK apologizes to the First Lady."

In his book, Lownie examined Prince Andrew’s ties to infamous financier Jeffrey Epstein, and alleged that Donald Trump had introduced the current president to Melania, per Fox News. Representatives for Melania Trump rejected the claim and pointed to her book which stated she met her husband in 1998 at the Kit Kat Club in New York City. She said she had not been introduced by Epstein.

This comes after the Daily Beast retracted an article that made similar claims, later issuing an apology to Melania Trump. "The Daily Beast recently published a story headlined ‘Melania Trump ‘Very Involved’ in Epstein Scandal: Author’ based on an interview with Michael Wolff. Upon reflection, we have determined that the article did not meet our standards and has therefore been removed from our platforms."

The statement continued, "In response to a letter from the first lady’s attorneys, The Daily Beast has also removed a portion of an episode of The Daily Beast Podcast titled ‘Trump’s Epstein Scandal Can’t Stop Won’t Stop’ referencing the first lady. The first lady points to her bestselling book ‘Melania’ as the definitive account of her life story. We apologize to the first lady and our readers."

Another retraction came from Democrat strategist James Carville, who repeated the claim on his podcast. Carville said, "In last week's podcast episode, we spoke with Judd Legum. After the episode, we received a letter from Melania Trump's lawyer. He took issue with our title of one of those YouTube videos from that episode and a couple of comments I made about the First Lady. We took a look at what they complained about, and we took down the video and edited out those comments from the episode. I also take back these statements and apologize."