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GriftMatrix

Paolo Zampolli Connects Epstein, Maxwell, Melania, and Trump. He’s Currently a US Special Envoy.

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The modeling agent rabbit hole goes deeper than anyone’s reporting.

Oh - you thought I was done writing about Melania’s surprise Epstein press conference and the Amanda Ungaro situation?

Well, I fell down the Paolo Zampolli rabbit hole and guess what I found? Every layer of this guy’s biography connects to something worse.

So let me back up and lay out the full picture of the man at the center of all of it, ’cause once you see the whole timeline, Melania’s panicked Thursday afternoon denial starts looking less like damage control and more like a load-bearing wall about to give.

Zampolli grew up rich in Milan. His father owned a toy company. When dad died, Paolo was 18 and inherited the business. He sold it to Silvio Berlusconi’s group to get into fashion and modeling, and became a protégé of John Casablancas, the founder of Elite Model Management. Casablancas had a documented history of sexual relationships with underage girls, including a public relationship with 16-year-old Stephanie Seymour when he was 42. This is the man who encouraged Zampolli to move to America.

So Zampolli started ID Models in New York in the mid-90s. Back in 1995, while he was a partner at Metropolitan Models, he’d met a Slovenian model named Melania Knauss on a scouting trip - and in 1996 he brought her to the US and helped her get an H-1B work visa. He moved her into his building at Zeckendorf Towers. Then in September 1998, he threw a party at the Kit Kat Club and introduced her to Donald Trump.

Trump was on a date that night. With a Norwegian heiress named Celina Midelfart.

Yes - that’s her real name.

During the Maxwell trial in 2021, evidence was given that Midelfart took 13 flights on Epstein’s plane and was one of his girlfriends in the ’90s. She’s denied it. And in the Epstein files released last November, there’s an email Epstein sent to a journalist in December 2015 where he described Midelfart as “my 20-year-old girlfriend in 93” and said “after two years i gave to donald.”

Gave to Donald. His words.

So the night Trump met Melania, he was on a date with a woman Epstein claims to have “given” him. At a party thrown by a modeling agent who’d later team up with Epstein on a bid to buy Elite Model Management. In a room full of models from that agent’s agency. And the woman Trump asked for her number that night had been brought to America by that same agent two years earlier.

Zampolli didn’t stay in modeling. After ID Models, he joined the Trump Organization as Director of International Development. Then he started his own real estate company, Paramount Group, which used models from his former agency as brokers to sell Manhattan apartments. Gross.

Then, he became Dominica’s ambassador to the UN in 2013. His partner Amanda Ungaro became Grenada’s UN ambassador for youth affairs in 2014. And here’s the detail that I genuinely had to read twice: according to Unlimited Hangout, Zampolli worked alongside Ghislaine Maxwell on UN ocean initiatives and was part of the team that developed Sustainable Development Goal 14.

He’s also connected to Maxwell’s TerraMar Project, the environmental nonprofit that gave out almost no money in grants and announced it was shutting down six days after Epstein was arrested in 2019.

The guy who introduced Melania to Trump was in a professional relationship with the woman who procured teenage girls for Jeffrey Epstein. While simultaneously holding a diplomatic post.

Okay - are you catching on to what this man MUST know about?

Trump appointed Zampolli to the Kennedy Center board in 2020. In the second term, he made him special envoy for global partnerships, a State Department gig. This is a man whose name shows up in the Epstein files. Whose modeling agency was patronized by Epstein. Who tried to buy Elite Models with Epstein in 2004. Who in one Epstein email is warned about as “trouble.” And who, according to the New York Times, contacted ICE last year to get the mother of his child deported during a custody battle - he denies it - a woman who happened to have flown on the Lolita Express as a teenager.

Now, as I mentioned in my last essay about all this, the Epstein Files also contain a redacted FBI proffer from 2019 where an immunity witness told federal agents that “Epstein introduced Melania Trump to Donald Trump” and that “Zempoli was trying to buy Elite Models with Epstein.”

Melania says Zampolli made the introduction, not Epstein. Zampolli says the same thing. But as of this week, neither of them has said it under oath, and no committee has subpoenaed him. And after Melania’s press conference Thursday, Zampolli told the Daily Mail he’s ready to testify. Which is a nice volunteer offer. The Oversight Committee should haul him in and ask him about everything EXCEPT Melania - just for funsies.

Meanwhile, Amanda Ungaro is in Brazil, and an X account in her name has been posting at Melania, threatening legal action. And Melania is at the White House podium saying she was never friends with Epstein while calling her “Love, Melania” email to Ghislaine Maxwell a “reply” - even though, as the Daily Beast pointed out, her own words suggest she wrote first.

The whole Zampolli timeline is sitting right there for anyone who wants to look. The modeling pipeline. The Epstein business partnership. The Maxwell connection. The Trump Organization. The diplomatic posts. The deportation. It’s all one guy, connecting all the same people, for 30 years. And he’s currently a US special envoy.

And that, my friends, is why Melania looked nervous.

Sources

Correction, September 27th, 2026: This essay first said John Casablancas was the subject of a 60 Minutes investigation in the 1980s - that was Paris agent Jean-Luc Brunel, and the line is gone. It said Zampolli sold his family’s toy company on Casablancas’s advice and that Casablancas got him into modeling - he sold it to go into fashion and modeling, and Casablancas later encouraged him to move to the US. It said the woman Trump left that party with was Melania - she turned down his request for her number that night. It said Zampolli scouted Melania after starting ID Models and brought her over on an H-1B visa - he met her in 1995 while he was at Metropolitan Models, and she got her H-1B after arriving in 1996. It said Melania denied ever knowing Epstein - she said she was never friends with him. It misquoted Epstein’s email about Celina Midelfart and said it came out this year - it came out last November, and reports differ on which journalist got it. It said TerraMar shut down five days after Epstein’s arrest - it announced its closure six days after. And it said Zampolli appears dozens of times in the Epstein files, goes to White House Christmas parties, has ambassador-level clearance and draws a government paycheck, and that trial testimony established Epstein sent Midelfart flowers - those lines are cut back to what the record shows.

Update, September 27th, 2026: A few lines now say who says so - the New York Times on the ICE report, which Zampolli denies, Unlimited Hangout on his UN ocean work with Maxwell, and the Maxwell trial evidence on Midelfart, which she denies - and the UN posts and the under-oath line are worded more exactly.