Donald & Melania Trump's Matchmaker Is No Stranger To Scandal

While they have been married for more than a quarter of a century, Donald and Melania Trump have been together even longer than that. The two first met in 1998 at a party thrown by Paolo Zampolli, the fashion model agent who discovered Melania while on a trip to Milan. Zampolli was a close friend to both. He helped Melania Trump get her U.S. visa and transform her life, and worked for the Trump Organization after his modeling business lost its most successful client. In 2005, he flew on Donald Trump's private plane to attend the Mar-a-Lago wedding of the couple he brought together. 20 years later, in what would be his latest scandal, Zampolli would reportedly ask the Trump administration to deport his ex-girlfriend.

According to the New York Times, Zampolli, who Trump appointed to the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2020, contacted David Venturella at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement soon after learning that his ex, Amanda Ungaro, had been arrested in Miami to inform the officer that Ungaro was in the country illegally. Venturella then reached out to agents in Florida and was taken into ICE custody. Venturella, who believed that Zampolli was using her immigration status as a way to win custody of their son, requested to be deported to Brazil. Zampolli denied the allegations, telling the New York Times that he called Venturella to find out what was happening. The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement to the Times, saying, "Any suggestion that she was arrested and removed for political reasons or favors is FALSE."

In 2016, Paolo Zampolli was part of a scandalous story about Melania Trump. On August 20 of that year, the Daily Mail published the article "Naked photoshoots, and troubling questions about visas that won't go away: The VERY racy past of Donald Trump's Slovenian wife" and in it, the paper repeated allegations the agency Zampolli owned and Melania was represented by, was actually an escort agency that catered to wealthy clients. Trump, who has a long history of suing media outlets, sued the British paper. The Daily Mail retracted the story and released a statement, in which it claimed that it "did not intend to state or suggest that these allegations are true." The paper also explained that the original story did not support the claims, which came from a Slovenian magazine, but brought them up to examine how the claims could affect Donald Trump's presidential campaign. 

Zampolli was also an associate of Jeffrey Epstein, and, per the New York Times, they once considered going into business together. Zampolli's name has come up in Epstein's emails, including one where Epstein calls Zampolli "trouble" and says he "sells stories to the press." Asked about his ties to the indicted sex trafficker, Zampolli told the paper, "At least I was included, because if you're not on the list, you're a loser, right?"