Maralee Nichols Breaks Silence on Tristan Thompson Paternity Test Results: ‘There Was Never Any Doubt’

Maralee Nichols broke her silence after Tristan Thompson revealed he’s the father of her newborn son.

“There was never any doubt that Tristan Thompson was the father of Maralee Nichols’ baby,” Nichols’ public relations consultant, Harvey Englander, told In Touch on January 4. “Tristan made numerous false and defamatory statements and declarations about Maralee over the past few months, and she is taking his contrite statement today in the context of all of those statements.”

One day prior, Tristan confirmed the paternity test results while issuing a public apology to ex-girlfriend Khloé Kardashian.

“Today, paternity test results revealed that I fathered a child with Maralee Nichols. I take full responsibility for my actions. Now that paternity has been established, I look forward to amicably raising our son,” he began, continuing, “I sincerely apologize to everyone I’ve hurt or disappointed throughout this ordeal both publicly and privately.”

Tristan, 30, then went on to apologize to Khloé, 37, whom he was dating at the time Maralee became pregnant. “You don’t deserve this. You don’t deserve the heartache and humiliation I have caused you. You don’t deserve the way I have treated you over the years,” he revealed, adding, “My actions certainly have not lined up with the way I view you. I have the upmost [sic] respect and love for you. Regardless of what you may think. Again, I am so incredibly sorry.”

The former personal trainer filed a paternity suit against Tristan in June 2021, claiming she became pregnant by him around his birthday in late March. The NBA player responded by acknowledging that the pair had sex at the time she claimed but requested a paternity test. Maralee later gave birth to a baby boy on December 1, around the time that news of the paternity suit broke.

Maralee told Us Weekly that Tristan told her he was “single and coparenting” his daughter, True Thompson, with Khloé and son Prince with ex Jordan Craig. “I would never have gotten involved with Tristan if I thought he was in a relationship,” she said in a story published on December 17.

Khloé and the basketball player started dating in August 2016 but split in 2019 after his cheating scandal with Khloé’s sister Kylie Jenner‘s former best friend Jordyn Woods.

They reconciled in the spring of 2020 after quarantining as a family with True, 3, amid the coronavirus pandemic. They were still a couple at the time of his birthday in March 2021, when he ended up getting together with Maralee. The pair broke up in the spring of 2021, shortly before Tristan was spotted partying with several women at the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles that June.

The Good American founder seemed to be trying to make sense of the heartache Tristan caused her in an Instagram Stories post on Thursday, December 30. It read, “There’s going to be very painful moments in your life that will change your entire world in a matter of minutes. These moments will change YOU. Let them make you strong, smarter and kinder. But don’t you go and become someone that [you’re] not. Cry. Scream if you have to. Then you straighten out that crown and keep it moving.”