Melania Trump’s book publisher requested that CNN sign an NDA and pony up a $250,000 “licensing fee” for an interview with the former first lady about her new memoir, the network reported Thursday.
After receiving word of the publisher’s monetary demand, CNN said it inquired further and was told the NDA with the $250,000 request was sent by accident.
“Neither Melania nor anyone from her team knew anything about the NDA and the document that was sent reflected an internal miscommunication…Had CNN signed an NDA, in the normal course of business, we would have approached Melania’s team to discuss [specifics of the interview],” Skyhorse Publishing president Tony Lyons wrote in a statement.
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The publisher’s contract stipulated that if the NDA was broken, CNN would have to pay $100,000 for each breach.
In a statement to the Daily Beast sent Oct. 5, Lyons further explained what he says was a communication mix-up.
“As the article acknowledges, Skyhorse informed CNN that the $250,000 excerpt licensing fee was mistakenly included in a simple confidentiality agreement. It is common practice in the publishing industry to charge a licensing fee for pre-publication usage,” said Lyons. “CNN chose to exploit what they were told, and should have known anyway, was a drafting mix-up in order to spin a story disparaging Melania Trump.”
The network said it is common practice not to pay for interviews, as doing so might affect the interviewee, so any request for payment from a presidential candidate’s wife would be denied.
Upon further digging, CNN discovered that a $250,000 sum is a somewhat common fee the former first lady gets for various speaking arrangements. She was paid the same amount to speak to Log Cabin Republicans and others.
Fox News interviewed Trump last month and denied paying anything for their conversation.
