Trump Organization staff writer Meredith McIver released a statement Wednesday apologizing for her role in the Melania Trump plagiarism controversy, saying it was a mistake and expressing regret over "the confusion and hysteria" it caused.
Melania Trump, the wife of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, delivered a speech at the Republican National Convention Monday night that was revealed to have lifted nearly an entire paragraph from a 2008 Democratic convention address given by First Lady Michelle Obama. The story dominated media coverage throughout the second day of the RNC and into the third.
McIver wrote that Mrs. Trump was an admirer of Mrs. Obama and, as they drafted the speech, she had shared some passages she liked from the First Lady’s addresses over the phone.
"I wrote them down and later included some of the phrasing in the draft that ultimately became the final speech," she wrote. "I did not check Mrs. Obama’s speeches. This was my mistake, and I feel terrible for the chaos I have caused Melania and the Trumps, as well as to Mrs. Obama. No harm was meant."
Meredith McIver, an in-house staff writer from the Trump Organization, releases statement on Melania speech pic.twitter.com/mWuPKmjsbn
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) July 20, 2016
McIver added that she had offered her resignation, but Donald Trump turned it down.
"Mr. Trump told me that people make innocent mistakes and that we learn and grow from these experiences," she wrote. "I asked to put out this statement because I did not like seeing the way this was distracting from Mr. Trump’s historic campaign and Melania’s beautiful message and presentation."
The Trump campaign initially strongly denied the accusations of plagiarism. Campaign manager Paul Manafort dismissed the controversy as media-driven and argued that Mrs. Trump employed "common words."
"There was no cribbing from Michelle Obama’s speech," Manafort said Tuesday. "These were common words and values, that she cares about her family and things like that. She was speaking in front of 35 million people last night. She knew that. To think she would be cribbing Michelle Obama’s words is crazy."