Longtime Trump biographer Michael Wolff says that First Lady Melania could be the missing link in President Donald Trump’s ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Wolff told Daily Beast Podcast host Joanna Coles that Melania was “very involved” in Epstein’s social circle and noted that this is how she met Trump.
“She’s introduced by a model agent, both of whom Trump and Epstein are involved with. She’s introduced to Trump that way. Epstein [knew] her well,” Wolff said.
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Trump and the future first lady reportedly first met in September 1998 through Paolo Zampolli, the founder of ID Models, who helped Melania emigrate to the United States. Zampolli had ties to Epstein and his now-incarcerated partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell, Politico reported. In explosive tapes recorded by Wolff, Epstein alleged that Trump liked to “f---” his friends’ wives and first slept with Melania on his “Lolita Express.”
Since March 2025, Zampolli has served as Trump’s special representative for global partnerships. The MAGA loyalist has a giant oil painting of Trump in his $17 million Georgetown mansion.
“Where does [Melania] fit into the Epstein story? Where does she fit into this, into this whole culture of models of indeterminate age?” Wolff said. “So this is another complicated dimension in this.”
The Trump administration has faced intense media scrutiny over the Epstein case following a July 6 memo from the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation that found Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial for sex trafficking charges in 2019 and that no “client list” of wealthy co-conspirators exists—the subject of endless conspiracy theories among Trump’s MAGA base. The findings have led Trump to lose some die-hard fans as his administration works to divert MAGA’s attention with National Security Adviser Tulsi Gabbard’s claims that the Obama administration engaged in a “treasonous conspiracy” to cook up intelligence on Russia to interfere with the 2016 election.
Sharing a two-page excerpt of her bestselling book, Melania, last week, the first lady refuted claims that Epstein had a hand in their introduction, writing in her book that she met Trump at New York’s Kit Kat Club.
Typically, the First Lady hides in the shadows, Wolff said.
“She never is by his side,” Wolff told Coles. “All of those courtroom appearances that she shows up once, I report in my book that one of the aides approached her and she said, ‘Nice try,’ and then laughed.”
Reached for comment, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung blasted Wolff as a “fraud.”
“Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s--t and has been proven to be a fraud,” he said. “He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
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