“I am not Epstein’s victim. Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump.”
First Lady Melania Trump’s words rang out during her April 9 remarks as she finally broke her silence regarding her knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s activities. Mrs. Trump accused certain individuals of lying and being “devoid of ethical standards, humility, and respect.”
While the timing of the speech was apparently unknown to even President Trump, online spectators immediately began asking, “Why now?” What had caused the First Lady to make a public statement and risk drawing even more attention to herself?
Perceptive internet sleuths pointed to statements made by one of Mrs. Trump’s longtime friends a day before her speech. The friend, Brazilian former model Amanda Ungaro, began accusing the First Lady of staying silent while Ungaro was deported with help from her ex-husband, Paolo Zampolli. In March, Zampolli was appointed by President Trump as the US Special Envoy for Global Partnerships.
“Are you already aware of the situation? Do you fully understand the extent of the information I possess regarding you and the individuals associated with you? I strongly advise you to consider the seriousness of these matters. Any actions taken against me or attempts to escalate this situation could have significant legal consequences,” Ungaro stated in posts that have since been deleted.
“I will tear down your corrupt system, even if it’s the last thing I do in my life. I will go all the way—I am not afraid. Maybe you should be afraid of what I know… of who you are, and who your husband is,” she wrote in another deleted tweet.
Ms. Ungaro has a verifiable relationship with Melania Trump via Zampolli, who himself has a heavily documented relationship with the Trumps, as well as Jeffrey Epstein. Ungaro has continued to post on Twitter/X claiming that she has inside information.
While American media seems to have zero interest in speaking with her, Ungaro has now given interviews to Brazilian, Spanish, and, most recently, Italian media. In each of these conversations she makes disturbing claims which threaten to debunk the story being told by the First Lady of the United States—namely, the idea that Melania Trump has no connection to Jeffrey Epstein.
Ungaro has shared striking information which she claims proves that Jeffrey Epstein had secret information about Mrs. Trump and that Zampolli made a deal with the First Lady to keep their secrets quiet.
The Alleged Pact Between Paolo Zampolli and the First Lady
Amanda Ungaro recently shared brand-new details of her relationships with Zampolli and Mrs. Trump with RAI, a news outlet owned by the Italian government.
“I met Melania when I was 18. We saw each other at a few dinners, I was with my friends, we’d sit together—I was very young,” Ungaro said in the program titled “The Epstein War.” “But when Trump decided to run for president, Melania started being the first to wish my son a happy birthday. She was the first to send him a big gift, delivered by the Secret Service. And from that point on we were invited to everything—New Year, Easter, Christmas, every occasion.”
Ungaro also cast doubt on Zampolli’s claim of introducing Melania to Donald Trump.
“Paolo always says: ‘I’m the one who introduced Melania to Trump.’ But now, in the documents released by the Department of Justice, it says that it was Epstein who did it. So there’s a lot more behind this story than it appears.”
Ungaro claims the tie that binds Zampolli and Melania Trump together is a secret pact they made with each other—a pact which reportedly included Zampolli agreeing to stay quiet about Melania’s alleged connections to Jeffrey Epstein.
“Behind all of this there’s a deal he (Zampolli) made with Melania. Because he isn’t close to Trump—he’s close to Melania. Plain and simple. His relationship with Trump goes through Melania,” Ungaro told RAI.
“[He says to Melania:] ‘Melania, I want to be the ambassador to Italy. Melania, you have to give me a position, a title.’ But I ask—how can Trump appoint as US ambassador someone who does drugs, someone who isn’t even American but an immigrant? So it’s Melania who’s supporting him, it’s Melania who’s pushing him. Between them there’s a pact, a deal—I’m 100% sure.”
In response to Ms. Ungaro’s accusations, Zampolli told RAI she “doesn’t know them.”
“If [Melania] had Amanda Ungaro’s secrets, she would have already told you, no? I mean—does that one [Amanda] know how to keep a secret? Look at the bullshit she’s said so far,” Zampolli said in the news program.
When pressed further about the claim that Epstein actually introduced the Trumps, Zampolli shoots back:
“You can say whatever you want — it makes no difference to me. If you want to go with that, the whole world knows I was the one who introduced them. I know it, the President knows it, she knows it, I know it, and the whole world knows it. If you want to say it was Epstein—fine, I’ll grant you that, and let’s move on.”
Zampolli also recently told the London Times that Ungaro had not talked to the First Lady for “more than 10 minutes… in ten years.” He claimed Ungaro had limited face time with Melania at White House events but “never had a phone number or email address.”
A Leaked Phone Call with New Evidence
On Sunday April 26, RAI released another report about Zampolli and Ungaro titled “The Shark.” This report contains an exclusive audio recording of a phone call between Zampolli and a friend in which the alleged pact is discussed.
n un audio esclusivo che Report è in grado di farvi ascoltare per la prima volta, l’inviato speciale di Donald Trump Paolo Zampolli rivela in una telefonata dell’esistenza di un patto stipulato tra lui e Melania Trump prima delle elezione presidenziali del 2016.
Domenica su Rai3 pic.twitter.com/amwvKutUz0— Report (@reportrai3) April 24, 2026
In the call, Zampolli can be heard sharing his involvement with Melania Trump following her 2017 lawsuit against the Daily Mail based on two articles which claimed she was an escort. In the audio recording, Zampolli states:
“I wrote the document for the President and for the First Lady—they used it for their speech. With the Daily Mail we just won an enormous case. An enormous case. I can’t talk about it because I have a confidentiality agreement and I still have to cash the check. We won last week. I am in this country thanks to President Trump. He gave me a job. I started in real estate and built myself a nice house. I would never betray a friend.”
Zampolli called Melania a “good girl” and that she was “not a prostitute”.
RAI and Ungaro interpret the recording as evidence of a mutual protection deal.
The Zampolli-Trump-Epstein Connection
In 1996, back when she was a young model known as Melania Knauss, Paolo Zampolli was the modeling agent who brought the future First Lady to New York City. He also sponsored Melania’s H-1B visa before she was later awarded the so-called Einstein visa. Questions have long swirled about how exactly Mrs. Trump was given the visa, which is reserved for individuals with extraordinary abilities, renowned academic researchers, multinational business executives, and others with international acclaim in their field. In 2018, Michael Wildes, an attorney for Melania Trump and her family, told the Washington Post that “Mrs. Trump was more than amply qualified and solidly eligible.”
Zampolli has for years claimed he introduced Donald Trump to his future wife and First Lady in 1998 at a party. In the days following Mrs. Trump’s press conference on Jeffrey Epstein, Zampolli stated he would testify in front of the US Congress about his apparent role in introducing the Trumps.
While Mrs. Trump’s press conference was an attempt at distancing herself from Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell, a few data points make it difficult to completely disregard the potential connections.
First, despite her attempts to downplay the communication between herself and Maxwell as simply a “polite reply” which amounts to nothing more than a “trivial note,” some critics see the pictures of the Trumps with Epstein and Maxwell, as well as the October 2002 email, as more than just a courtesy hello. The email from Mrs. Trump to Ms. Maxwell states:
“How are you? Nice story about JE in NY mag. You look great on the picture. I know you are very busy flying all over the world. How was Palm Beach? I cannot wait to go down. Give me a call when you are back in NY. Have a great time! Love, Melania”
Additionally, in July 2019, a month before Epstein’s arrest and alleged suicide, the New York Times reported that “Mr. Epstein, since the election, has played it up, claiming to people that he was the one who introduced Mr. Trump to his third wife, Melania Trump, though neither of the Trumps has ever mentioned Mr. Epstein playing a role in their meeting. Mrs. Trump has said that her future husband simply asked for her phone number at a party at the Kit Kat Club during Fashion Week in 1998.”
Finally, a recently released interview with a former assistant of Epstein’s also claimed that “Epstein introduced Melania Trump to Donald Trump.”
Mrs. Trump has since sued publishers who sought to make similar claims, including a recently published book in the UK which originally repeated the claim. At least one source for the accusations in the book was controversial author Michael Wolff.
Despite the lawsuits, the claim has refused to die thanks to Amanda Ungaro and online researchers who continue to ask questions about the relationship between the Trumps and Jeffrey Epstein.
The Modeling to Sexual Assault Pipeline
While Epstein and Zampolli’s stories about who introduced the Trumps are in conflict, we can confirm that Epstein was friends with the Trumps and Zampolli. We can also confirm that Amanda Ungaro first arrived in New York City in 2002 at the age of 17 after flying on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane with her then-modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, the former head of modeling agencies Karin Models and MC2 and the perfect example of the modeling industry’s pipeline to sexual exploitation.
Brunel had been accused of sexual abuse for decades, including in a 1988 CBS’ 60 Minutes report titled American Girls in Paris. Brunel faced no charges or legitimate investigation against him until the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein in July 2019. In December 2020, Brunel would be arrested by French authorities and accused of helping Epstein traffic young girls. Brunel allegedly hung himself in a Paris prison in 2022.
Ungaro recently described her first flight on Epstein’s plane to O Globo. She says there were numerous young girls on the plane who all seemed to know Epstein:
“Some of them sat on his lap, stayed close, playing around. It felt like they already knew each other. It didn’t seem like a group of strangers meeting for the first time. Those people hadn’t just met, like I had.”
When she asked Brunel who Epstein was and who the girls were:
“He said it was just a friend and that the girls were models. I was 17 and shy. If it were today, I would question everything. But at the time, I didn’t. I didn’t even know who Jeffrey Epstein was.”
Almost immediately after arriving in the United States, Ungaro began being groomed by a 32-year-old Zampolli. Some reports have claimed they first met when Ungaro was only 15. Zampolli would send the young Ungaro gifts to her home in Brazil and made his affection for her known. They have said they didn’t begin dating until she was 17.
Ungaro told RAI that theirs was a “very toxic relationship” from the beginning which involved physical, psychological, and sexual abuse by Zampolli. The report from RAI showed pictures of Ungaro’s alleged abuse. The abuse was corroborated for the Italian media by friends of Ungaro.
“Once he punched me in the face because I didn’t want to have sex with him,” Ungaro stated. “It was constant physical violence, and psychological too: ‘You’re nobody, you’re not capable of anything, you’re stupid, you’re a Brazilian.’ He would try every way he could to humiliate me, to make me feel inferior.”
Zampolli denied all accusations of physical abuse, claiming Ungaro’s bruises were the result of kickboxing training. He also claimed that she was genetically predisposed to be a liar because of her Brazilian heritage.
“Brazilians watch the soap opera. They’re all a bit like that. You must have heard that Brazilian women cause trouble for everyone, right? It’s not like this one was the first,” Zampolli told RAI. “It’s programming. They’re programmed to do it.”
Zampolli was confronted by the Italian news outlet with files from the Epstein releases which appear to show him attempting to purchase Elite Models with Epstein.
“Epstein came to me because he wouldn’t have been able to buy it on his own—there were requirements that the buyer had to be someone in the industry, it couldn’t just be a fund. And he’d talked to me about it. Then the whole thing fizzled—he didn’t buy it, and I lost the bid.”
Regarding his knowledge of Epstein’s illegal activities, Zampolli said, “I knew he had girls. I knew—but they weren’t mine, because they weren’t even models. They were young girls, minors, masseuses. That wasn’t what he did [in public]. The models were a cover-up for this guy Epstein.”
Amanda Ungaro Deported with Paolo Zampolli’s Support
In March, the New York Times reported that Paolo Zampolli had allegedly used his connections within the Trump administration to expedite his ex-wife’s deportation from the United States. “Mr. Zampolli, 56, is known in Washington for flaunting his proximity to the Trumps. In this case, he used his clout to solicit help from an agency beset by allegations of unlawful overreach,” The Times stated.
The Times outlined how Amanda Ungaro was arrested for fraud after performing unlicensed cosmetic surgery. Ungaro has denied the accusations and said that “the truth will come to light.” When Zampolli learned she was in jail he saw an opportunity to win an ongoing custody battle over the couple’s son.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) records and a source who spoke with the Times, Zampolli called ICE official David Venturella and told him of his fight with Ungaro. He said that if she were deported it might help him win parental rights to his son. Venturella then apparently called ICE’s Miami office to make sure Ungaro was deported from the jail before being released on bail. Ungaro had lived in the US from 2002 until her eventual deportation in 2025.
In late March, Ungaro described her deportation to Brazilian news site O Globo, stating that she was pulled out of her house at six in the morning, handcuffed in front of her son, and taken to the police station.
While the Times acknowledges that Ungaro may have been deported without the help of Zampolli, his encouragement and his close relationship with the Trumps appears to have sped up the process. Zampolli denies having done anything more than inquire about Ungaro’s status, and officials with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) say that she was deported for an expired visa and reject any claim that it was politically motivated.
The Story That Won’t Die
While the alleged pact between Paolo Zampolli and Melania Trump has yet to be proven in court, these claims offer a possible motive for his efforts to deport his ex-wife Amanda Ungaro—and a plausible explanation for why Mrs. Trump chose to speak out about Jeffrey Epstein when she did.
While Amanda Ungaro has not claimed to have knowledge about Epstein’s activities or potential involvement with intelligence, the same RAI “Epstein War” report includes interviews with Ari Ben-Menashe, the former senior executive for Israel’s Directorate of Military Intelligence. RAI has long claimed that Jeffrey Epstein worked for Israeli intelligence. Whitney Webb was one of the first to report on Ben-Menashe’s statements regarding alleged links between Jeffrey Epstein and Israeli intelligence in 2019. In the RAI interview Menashe elaborated on his claims.
Ben-Menashe told RAI that Israel has a metaphorical “nuclear bomb” to use to compel American politicians to support Israel’s political goals.
“They have photos of Melania with Epstein. Trump isn’t the point — Melania is,” Ben-Menashe told RAI.
As the investigation continues, Amanda Ungaro is preparing to tell her own life story. In recent days, Ungaro has been posting teasers of an upcoming book on her Twitter account. One recent post of her working out at the gym simply stated “The comeback begins now.” It appears Amanda Ungaro is not done speaking out about what she knows.
For a deep dive into the life and history of Paolo Zampolli, read Whitney Webb and Mark Goodwin’s First Friends: How the First Couple’s Consigliere Went From Modeling Mogul to Special Envoy.
