With President Donald Trump under growing scrutiny about his former association with the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, especially as there are indications of resistance from within his own party, his long-time biographer Michael Wolff has brought yet another twist to the developing drama.
Wolff has made a claim that Epstein had a major role to play in Melania Trump's meeting with her then-future husband.
In an astonishing reveal during his appearance on The Daily Beast podcast, Wolff suggested that well before her marriage to Trump and the subsequent rise as First Lady, Melania Knauss was in the closest approximation to the elite social network of Epstein. By this connection, it is here where he traces she might have met Donald Trump.
The connection was made through Paolo Zampolli, ID Models' founder, who arranged Melania's emigration to the United States and was also reported to be close to both Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell. Trump and Melania initially met in 1998.
"Where does [Melania] belong in the Epstein narrative? Where does she belong in this, in this entire culture of models of uncertain age?" Wolff posed on the podcast. "So there's another complicated aspect to this."
"She's brought to Trump by a model agent, both of whom Trump and Epstein have dealings with. Epstein had known her well. She's brought to Trump in that way. Epstein [had known] her well," Wolff went on.
He pointed out that Melania circulated in the same model circles that Trump and Epstein hung out in and wondered at her association with what he termed as a "culture of models of indeterminate age."
Wolff also disclosed that Epstein had talked extensively to him about Trump in August 2017—two years prior to Epstein's death in his prison cell. The talks, Wolff added, provided additional information on the lengthy and complicated relationship between the two men, reported The Daily Beast.
Melania Trump has disavowed any link with Epstein. She even posted last week an excerpt from her memoir Melania, where she described her initial meeting with Trump. The meeting, as told by her, took place at New York City's Kit Kat Club—not via Epstein.
In the book, Melania wrote about meeting Trump on a date with someone else but spending the remainder of the night talking to her. "It was a fresh break from the normal silly chatter," she wrote.
Wolff also portrayed the former First Lady as one who deliberately stays out of the limelight. "She never is by his side," he said.
Despite Donald Trump's attempts to distance himself from Epstein, a 2000 photo shows the former couple—Donald and Melania—at his Mar-a-Lago estate posing with Epstein and Maxwell. Epstein himself had once claimed that he was responsible for introducing the pair.
Trump's previous association with Epstein was brought back into focus following a report by The Wall Street Journal, which indicated that Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump in a May briefing that his name had been mentioned in Department of Justice documents related to Epstein.
The Trump administration has also come under fire following a July 6 memo from the FBI and DOJ, which reported that there is no current "client list" associated with the Epstein investigation.
Piling on the pressure, the Department of Justice recently demanded an interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's long-time business partner who is serving a sentence after she was convicted of soliciting underage girls for Epstein in 2021. Epstein died while in custody in 2019 under mysterious conditions.
Read also| India Reaffirms Backing for Two-State Solution in Israel-Palestine Conflict at UN
Read also| UNSC Report: TRF Posted Pahalgam Attack Site Photo, Claimed Responsibility Twice
