Melania Trump

The Daily Mail alleged Mrs Trump had worked as a part-time escort in New York, and had met her husband, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, earlier than was previously reported.

Blogger Webster Tarpley wrote that Mrs Trump feared her past becoming public.

The claims were "outright lying", lawyer Charles Harder said.

"These defendants made several statements about Mrs Trump that are 100 percent false and tremendously damaging to her personal and professional reputation," Mr Harder said in a statement.

According to Melania Trump, the story of her American arrival is quite simple: "I came to the United States, to New York, in 1996," she told CNN's Anderson Cooper on February 29, 2016.

But Melania posed for those photos, which appeared in the French magazine Max, during a shoot in New York City in 1995 when she was 25 and known as "Melania K," according to Bojan Pozar, the author of the biography "Melania Trump: The Inside Story."

That year is possibly the key to whether or not Melania, now 46, broke immigration law by working in the US without the proper visa.

Ms Trump's prime time speech to the Republican National Convention was watched by 35 million people, but its aftermath has been

Side-by-side comparisons of the transcripts show the text in Trump's address following, nearly to the word, the first lady's own from the first night of the Democratic convention in Denver nearly eight years ago.

The controversy quickly overshadowed the speech. The Trump campaign signed off on the speech, according to sources. A campaign representative did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Here is Trump, on Monday: