Donald Trump's wife, Melania, is reportedly building a case for defamation against several media outlets that referred to her as an "escort" in their reporting on one or more occasion.

"Mrs. Trump has placed several news organizations on notice of her legal claims against them, including Daily Mail among others, for making false and defamatory statements about her supposedly having been an 'escort' in the 1990s," Charles Harder, an attorney for Trump, told Politico on Monday.

"All such statements are 100 percent false, highly damaging to her reputation and personally hurtful," he added, noting that Trump "understands that news media have certain leeway in a presidential campaign, but outright lying about her in this way exceeds all bounds of appropriate news reporting and human decency."

In an article published last week, Daily Mail reporter Natalie Clarke wrote about a Slovenian magazine's recent claim that the modeling agency Trump worked for in New York doubled as an elite escort agency for wealthy men living in the city.

According to Politico, more than one outlet in the United Kingdom warned staff members not to cover similar allegations against the potential first lady. Two outlets that did publish the allegations, the Inquisitir and Bipartisan Report, later apologized and retracted their stories.