As soon as a so-called ceasefire was called in the US-Iran war, Jeffery Epstein's ghost returned to haunt Donald Dumb. Even his Bimbo-in-Chief "model" Melania - who is dumber than her pimp husband - is distancing herself from any Epstein connection (and by ricochet from her own dumb husband as she anticipates a dreary outcome for the both of them).
Donny boy, you can run to Iran but you can't hide from Epstein's filthy ghost. Seems like the ghost of the sex criminal (assassinated in his prison cell to keep him from telling all on Trump) won't just leave his criminal buddy Donald Dumb alone.
Opinion: There Can Only Be One Reason for Melania Talking Epstein. It’s Not Good
David Rothkopf
Fri, April 10, 2026
President Donald Trump has apparently decided that being heavily linked to a notorious sex trafficker, while bad enough to make him want to start a war to distract from it, is not as bad as being seen as a genocidal maniac.
So, it appears, he decided today to have his wife make an extraordinary statement at the White House, to change the subject back to the previous scandal.
At least that was one of the conclusions that could be drawn in the wake of first lady Melania Trump’s appearance, at which she said, “The lies linking me with Jeffrey Epstein need to end today. I’ve never been friends with Epstein. I never had a relationship with Epstein or his accomplice, Maxwell. My email reply to Maxwell cannot be categorized as anything more than casual correspondence.”
The email correspondence to which she was referring began with the salutation “Dear G!,” included flattering references to a story about “JE” in New York magazine and to Ghislaine Maxwell’s appearance in a photograph. Then, following a question about a recent Maxwell trip to Palm Beach, Mrs. Trump concluded with a suggestion that Maxwell, now serving time for sex trafficking in federal prison, give her a call when she is next in New York City. It was signed “Love, Melania.”
This decades-old email from the first lady was part of a January dump of documents in the Epstein files. / Justice Department
Needless to say, given that the exchange is now a matter of public record, suggesting that the president’s wife never had a relationship with Maxwell, seems a stretch. As for her not having a relationship with Epstein, with moments of her appearance, the internet was flooded with images of the first lady looking very cozy with Epstein and Maxwell.
Because there is a ton of evidence attesting to the fact that she did, in fact, have a relationship of some sort with both of them.
Epstein once called Trump his [best friend]
As a result, the first lady’s bizarre intervention raises a couple of questions. One is why? The other is why now?
There is speculation that she may have raised the issue in anticipation of the next stages in a legal matter in which she is involved. But, beyond that, since she could not exactly commandeer the White House and use it as a stage for a personal statement without the approval and support of the president’s own staff, a larger question becomes, why would they go along with it?
Surely they would know that it would cause a media sensation (which it did). And we also know that it has been a priority of the White House to get the Epstein story out of the news for a long time now.
Indeed, it has been asserted that one of the reasons that Attorney General Pam Bondi was fired and the president’s former attorney Todd Blanche was made her temporary replacement was because the president was frustrated with Bondi’s inability to make the story go away.
Yet now, it’s the big news out of the White House today. By choice. (Unless, Melania went rogue which, while a delicious possibility, seems very unlikely again, because of the logistics and the way the event unfolded center stage at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.)
Why? Could it be that the war in Iran which many felt was, like the attack on Venezuela before it, designed to change the subject from Epstein, had started to be an even bigger problem for the president? Not only was it a strategic fiasco which has left Iran with seemingly more global clout and potential new revenue sources, but Trump’s Tuesday morning threat to erase Iranian civilization off the map shocked the conscience of the world.
The president had launched into a full-blown genocide level threat against Iran on Tuesday morning. / Truth Social/ Donald Trump
Trump was being seen thanks to his genocidal threat as a monster and a madman by the entire world. Even his hastily arranged, patched-together ceasefire could not undo the damage caused by Trump’s shocking expression of ghastly intent. And it does not seem likely to hold long enough to restore Trump’s desire to be seen as a master of power diplomacy.
What is more, Trump couldn’t help himself and offered more threats in a Truth Social post late on Wednesday evening along with a promise of turning his attention to new “conquests.”
Donald Trump/Truth Social
While it is unlikely anyone in the White House explicitly said, “OK, it’s better to talk about Epstein than about behaving like Hitler” (in part because there seem to be plenty of folks in the White House that don’t consider “behaving like Hitler” a bad thing), it does seem that they were desperate enough to change the subject to OK the First Lady’s appearance which all involved must have known would be a newsmaker.
(Trump told an MS NOW reporter who caught him on the phone during “a war meeting” that he had “no prior knowledge,” which itself seems hard to believe.)
First lady Melania Trump said in a spoken statement from the White House that she was never friends with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and blasted what she called “lies.” / Evan Vucci/Reuters
That Melania then went on to call for Congressional hearings at which the victims of Epstein could be heard must not have sat well with a president and those around him who have been working like crazy to stop just that from happening. So, there is clearly more to this story than meets the eye. And it will be very interesting both to get to the bottom of it and to watch the media spend the days and weeks ahead trying to disprove the first lady’s Sergeant Schultz-like assertion: “I know nothing.”
For now, we are left with an apparent choice by the president and his team to return the Epstein story to center stage, and with the abundance of evidence that their primary goal was to get people to stop thinking about the president’s catastrophic decision to attack Iran and his despicable performance as commander-in-chief.
Unless, of course, the president was as blindsided by his wife’s statement as anyone else and we therefore must conclude the old guy is no more aware of, or in control of, what goes on in the White House than he is of anything else at the moment.
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A Teenager on Epstein's Plane
Amanda Ungaro is a Brazilian former model who arrived in the United States around 2002. She was 16 or 17 years old. According to a New York Times investigation and reporting corroborated by multiple outlets, she flew to New York on Jeffrey Epstein's private plane from Paris.
Her modeling agent at the time was Jean-Luc Brunel, who was later accused of procuring young women for Epstein. Brunel died in a French jail in 2022 while awaiting trial on charges of rape and sexual assault of minors. [Just like Jeffrey Epstein].
Ungaro has been cited in recent discussions as a survivor of the Epstein network.
The Man Who Introduced the Trumps
Image Credit: Paolo Zampolli by Joneon and NikoPat1, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
In New York, Ungaro became the partner of Paolo Zampolli, an Italian-American modeling agent. Zampolli is the man who introduced Donald Trump to Melania Knauss in 1998 — a fact both the Trumps and Zampolli have publicly confirmed for years.
Zampolli and Ungaro were together for roughly two decades. They had a son. Both secured United Nations ambassadorships — Zampolli representing Dominica, Ungaro representing Grenada. They attended Donald Trump's first inauguration in 2017 and, according to reporting, sat at Melania's table during the dinner.
Getty Images has over 300 photos of Ungaro at diplomatic receptions, galas, and events alongside Zampolli, often in rooms that included figures from the Trump orbit. This was not someone on the margins.
Zampolli currently serves as Trump's special representative for global partnerships and sits on the board of the Kennedy Center.
How She Was Removed
Image credit: @paolozampolli/Instagram
The relationship between Zampolli and Ungaro ended bitterly. They separated permanently in 2021, and a custody battle over their teenage son followed.
In June 2025, Ungaro was arrested in Miami on fraud charges related to a medical spa. According to the New York Times, Zampolli saw an opportunity. He contacted David Venturella, a senior ICE official, and explained that his ex was in the country on a long-expired visa. During a call to ICE's Miami field office, Venturella noted the case was important to someone close to the White House. ICE agents picked Ungaro up before she could post bail. She was deported to Brazil.
Zampolli has denied seeking special treatment or requesting that Ungaro be detained. The Department of Homeland Security said any suggestion she was targeted for political reasons is false. A spokesperson for the First Lady said at the time that Melania had "no knowledge of, nor involvement in" the matter.
Ungaro, speaking from Brazil after her deportation, described the experience as devastating.
Two Stories Collide
There is no verified evidence that Ungaro's posts prompted Melania Trump's Epstein statement on Thursday. The Latin Times, one of the first outlets to examine the connection, noted explicitly that no major outlet has confirmed a link between the two events.
But the collision is hard to ignore. On the same day the First Lady used the White House podium to say the lies about her and Epstein needed to end, a woman who arrived in this country on Epstein's plane — whose ex-partner introduced the Trumps, who sat at Melania's inauguration table, and who was deported after that same ex-partner contacted ICE — was directing posts at Melania from Brazil that were being seen by hundreds of thousands of people.
Ungaro's specific claims about her relationship with the First Lady have not been independently verified. What has been verified, by the New York Times and others, is the biography that brought her into the Trump orbit in the first place — and the series of events that removed her from it.
The two stories that converged on Thursday — Epstein and immigration — did so in the person of Amanda Ungaro. Whether that convergence is coincidence or something else is a question no one involved has answered.
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Comer responds to Melania Trump: ‘We will have hearings’ with Epstein victims
Sophie Brams
Fri, April 10, 202
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) committed on Friday to holding hearings with victims of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as part of his committee’s ongoing probe, a day after first lady Melania Trump called on Congress to let them testify.
“I’ve always planned on having hearings with the victims,” Comer said during an appearance on Fox News’s “America Reports.”
The first lady denied any relationship to Epstein or his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell during rare remarks at the White House on Thursday, slamming reports that she knew them and that Epstein introduced her to President Trump as “lies.”
She also urged Congress to provide the victims with a public hearing “specifically centered around the survivors” and the option to have their testimony entered into the congressional record.
“Then, and only then, will we have the truth,” the first lady said.
Comer said Friday that Oversight Committee attorneys had been in constant contact with the attorneys representing Epstein’s victims for months and that some were willing to come in, but most others were not.
“We’ve always planned on having a hearing with Epstein victims once the depositions have been completed,” he said, noting that there were more “high-profile men” expected to appear before the committee.
“Then I agree with the first lady. We will have hearings,” he continued.
The committee has deposed multiple high-profile individuals, including former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as part of its investigation into Epstein and Maxwell’s crimes. The questioning has mainly happened behind closed doors, though subsequent transcripts and recordings have been released.
Further depositions are scheduled for the coming months, including one with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in June. The panel has also subpoenaed former Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify; however, the Justice Department is attempting to fight the subpoena, arguing that it applies only to Bondi in her official capacity.
Several Democrats are also pressing Melania Trump to testify, suggesting she may have knowledge pertinent to the investigation.
“If the First Lady wants to clear her name, she should come before the Oversight Committee and testify under oath,” Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) wrote on social platform X. “Otherwise, this is just a shameless book promotion.”
Meanwhile, a group of Epstein survivors pushed back against the first lady’s call for a public congressional hearing in a joint statement Thursday.
“Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein have already shown extraordinary courage by coming forward, filing reports, and giving public testimony,” they said. “Asking more of them now is a deflection of responsibility, not justice.”
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