Kim Kardashian has threatened a Huffington Post contributor with legal action after she alleged the reality star's Paris robbery was a "stunt".
In a letter obtained by website TMZ, the reality TV star demands Sharika Soal, a contributor to The Huffington Post, issue a retraction and an apology for her self-published post on 8 October (16) which included a quote, alleged to be from Kim saying her ordeal was a "publicity stunt gone horribly wrong."
Kim's representative points out that the quote used by Soal, a social media specialist and publicist, is a fabrication, which originated from a satirical website.
Soal has posted a number of features via Huffington Post’s Contributor platform, where contributors control their own work and post freely - without any editorial interference - to the site. The post she wrote about Kim, which was shared widely on social media, is no longer running on the site, and representatives for the news outlet told TMZ they pulled the story when editors realized it violated the platform's terms.
An excerpt from the letter confirms what happened on the night of the robbery, and the 35-year-old's representative stresses Kim "was a victim of a horrifying crime", and that the mother-of-two, after "being bound by the arms and legs" with duct-tape on her mouth..., believed she might be killed at any moment."
"The robbery was not a hoax nor publicity stunt. For you to attempt to twist these horrible and traumatic events of the Paris robbery into a narrative concerning a publicity stunt and purported felony conduct by my client is not only perverse and highly offensive to my client (and to any reasonable person) but actionable," the representative continued in the letter.
Soal has reportedly explained to Kim that she cannot publish a retraction, because she has been blocked from her blogger account on the news outlet's website.