In 2002, a seventeen-year-old girl from Londrina, Brazil boarded Jeffrey Epstein's private jet in Paris. Her agent was Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modelling scout and human trafficker who over three decades built a procurement and trafficking network that delivered girls and women to Epstein. On the flight from Paris to New York, there were approximately thirty girls. Some sat on Epstein's lap. Ghislaine Maxwell moved through the cabin with the ease of someone who had seen all of this before, because she had.

"I was a little scared when I saw all those girls," Amanda Ungaro told the Brazilian newspaper O Globo in April 2026. "I was like, 'Guys, where am I?' It didn't seem like a chance meeting. Those people had not just met, as was my case." "Some of them sat on his lap, stayed close, playing," Ungaro said of Epstein. "It gave the impression that she already knew those girls," she said of Maxwell.

Ungaro arrived in New York and got out of that world. Twenty-four years later she is back in Brazil. Her former partner, the man who claims to have introduced Donald Trump to Melania Trump, called a federal immigration official and had her deported before she could post bail. His name is Paolo Zampolli. He was thirty-two when they met. She was seventeen.

Jean-Luc Brunel

Brunel had been scouting models since the 1970s, first through Karin Models in Paris. Allegations of rape and coercion followed him from the beginning of his career, publicly enough that CBS's 60 Minutes named him in 1988 in accusations of drugging, assaulting, and raping models. The industry ignored the victims and moved on. Among the girls he signed during this period was Christy Turlington, whom he discovered at fourteen.

His relationship with Epstein strengthened through the 1990s. Between 1998 and 2005, Brunel appears in Epstein's flight logs on twenty-five separate trips. After Epstein's 2008 conviction on charges of soliciting sex with a minor, Brunel visited him in jail at least seventy times during the thirteen months he served. In 2005, Epstein had wired Brunel at least a million dollars to launch MC2 Model Management, a new agency with offices in New York and Miami. The name is widely understood as an internal reference to Epstein: E=mc2. Employees of MC2 later testified they were paid to obtain U.S. visas for young girls living in condos Epstein maintained at 301 East 66th Street. Brunel's former bookkeeper for both Karin Models and MC2, Maritza Vasquez, confirmed in a 2010 sworn statement that Brunel routinely housed models in those condos.

Virginia Giuffre, in sworn civil depositions, described Brunel as the central recruiter of Epstein's network: he identified girls, approached them with modelling promises, transported them internationally, and delivered them. In a 2015 affidavit, Giuffre claimed Epstein told her he had "slept with over 1,000 of Brunel's girls." A 2007 court complaint alleged that Epstein, Maxwell, Brunel, and others had "deliberately engaged in a pattern of racketeering that involved luring minor children through MC2, mostly girls under the age of 17, to engage in sexual play for money."

In Brazil, the pipeline ran through modelling competitions. In 2004, Brunel visited Gláucia Fekete's family home in rural Brazil when she was sixteen, offering her entry into a modelling contest in Ecuador. At the competition, contestants reported they were not allowed to contact their families. When Brunel subsequently offered to fly Fekete to New York at no cost, her mother refused and cut off contact, later saying she believed that decision had protected her daughter. BBC News and Brazilian federal prosecutors, who opened a formal inquiry in February 2026, documented the pattern. Brunel used competitions, agencies, and visa sponsorships to move young women from Brazil toward Epstein. At least one Brazilian woman, identified only as Ana, showed the BBC her passport and a U.S. visa listing Karin Models of America as the sponsor. She said she never worked for the agency.

In 2016, Brunel quietly opened negotiations with federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. Handwritten notes from a federal prosecutor, released in the 2026 tranche of Epstein documents, state: "One of Epstein's bfs, Jean Luc Brunel, has helped get girls. He is wanting to cooperate." His lawyer confirmed his client had recruited girls for Epstein and possessed photographs. A date was set for Brunel to present himself at the U.S. Attorney's office. Then Epstein became aware, the released documents show him writing to attorney Kathy Ruemmler that an associate of Brunel's had demanded three million dollars "so that Jean-Luc would not go in." Whether any payment changed hands is unknown. Brunel refused to testify soon after.

Three years later, Epstein was dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Two years after that, on February 19, 2022, Brunel was found hanging in his cell at La Santé prison in Paris, charged with rape and sexual assault of minors and with trafficking of minors. He died before any of those charges reached trial. French authorities ruled it a suicide. In early 2026, French magistrates announced they would reopen the case.

Who is Paolo Zampolli?

Zampolli was born in Milan in March 1970 to a wealthy family. His father owned Harbert, a Milanese toy company that held the Italian distribution rights for Kenner products including Star Wars figures and the Easy-Bake oven. His father died in a ski accident when Zampolli was 18. Zampolli left university to take over the company, then sold it to Gruppo Giochi Preziosi, which acquired Harbert in 1994. He moved to New York on the advice of John Casablancas, founder of Elite Model Management. Casablanca was a long-standing Trump confidant, who had watched Zampolli organise the Look of the Year contest in Ibiza in 1994.

Casablancas ran an agency where the sexual abuse of underage models was, by the accounts of staff and victims, endemic. He had a public relationship with fourteen-year-old Stephanie Seymour when he was forty-two. At fifty, he married a seventeen-year-old model. A 2019 federal lawsuit alleged Elite executives including Casablancas competed to see who could sexually assault or rape the most children and women in the agency's care. He was accused in a 2002 civil lawsuit of sexual assault of a minor. Casablanca died in Rio de Janeiro in 2013 without facing criminal proceedings.

Zampolli founded ID Model Management in New York and moved into the same social world Casablancas had built. By his own account, he introduced Melania Knauss to Donald Trump at a party at the Kit Kat Club in September 1998. He had sponsored Melania's H-1B visa to enter the United States in 1996, placed her in his apartment building at Zeckendorf Towers in Manhattan, and was the primary social connection between her and the man she would marry. Trump called him "My Paolo." Zampolli attended the Trump wedding in 2005.

That account is directly contested by a document in the released Epstein files. A proffer statement designated EFTA00105195, from a cooperating witness interviewed three days after Epstein's 2019 arrest, claims under penalty of federal prosecution that it was Epstein, not Zampolli, who introduced Melania to Trump. Proffer agreements carry criminal liability for false statements. Zampolli calls the claim false. No committee has subpoenaed him. No sworn proceeding has examined either claim. As of April 2026, the document sits in the released files with no official response.

Zampolli's connections to Epstein and Maxwell

Epstein funded Jean-Luc Brunel's MC2 Model Management with a $1 million loan in 2005; MC2 shared Manhattan offices with Zampolli's ID Models and the two agencies operated from the same premises. In 2004, Zampolli and Epstein jointly attempted to buy Elite Model Management at public auction. The bid failed, but documents their shared financial interests in the modelling industry at exactly the time Ungaro was newly in New York. Zampolli was also a named partner in Ghislaine Maxwell's Sustainable Oceans Alliance, closely associated with her TerraMar Project. U.S. law enforcement treats TerraMar as a fraudulent charity that served as a financial vehicle for Maxwell's activities. It was shut down within days of Epstein's 2019 arrest.

His social and business world overlaps repeatedly with people carrying criminal records or documented involvement in fraud and organised crime. He dined, by his own account, twice daily at Cipriani in New York, owned by Giuseppe Cipriani, who appears in Epstein's black book and was described as close to both Weinstein and Sarah Ferguson. He maintained close ties with Flavio Briatore, described by New York Magazine as "a convicted card cheat, and an accused Formula 1 race fixer," convicted of fraud in absentia in Italy in 1984 and a fugitive in the US Virgin Islands through the late 1980s, who appears as a mutual Trump acquaintance in the Epstein flight logs. Francis Lorenzo, the Dominican Republic's deputy UN ambassador and a Caribbean diplomatic counterpart of Zampolli's, pleaded guilty in 2016 to conduiting over $1.3 million in bribes from Ng Lap Seng, a Macau-based Chinese billionaire with documented United Front Work Department ties, to UN officials including former General Assembly president John Ashe.

ID Model Management's biggest client was Les Wexner, the Ohio billionaire whose company L Brands owned Victoria's Secret and who was, from 1987 until their acrimonious split in 2007, Jeffrey Epstein's primary and effectively sole financial backer. Epstein used his Wexner connection for decades as cover, routinely posing as a Victoria's Secret recruiter to approach young women.

Zampolli's own description of the relationship: "For me, Jeffrey Epstein was a financial partner of Victoria's Secret. I had to deal with him. We never get along, thank God. But I had to have a very cordial relationship."

A 2011 document in the released Epstein files shows Epstein warning an Emirati associate about Zampolli in writing: "Be careful, Zampolli is trouble. Lots." No context accompanies it. It sits in the files unaddressed.

Zampolli, Weinstein, and how the networks overlapped

The connection between Epstein and Weinstein is documented rather than inferred. The two associated for years, sharing a favourite outdoor table at a restaurant in the Hamptons. Epstein eventually severed the relationship when Weinstein "acted too aggressively with one of his 'favorite girls.'" That sentence is significant in both directions: it establishes Weinstein's conduct as something even Epstein found excessive, and it confirms the two men were sharing access to the same women.

Epstein introduced at least one of his trafficking victims to Weinstein, who arranged for her to audition for a film his company was producing. Ghislaine Maxwell attended Weinstein and Miramax events repeatedly between 2007 and 2014. Maria Farmer, one of Epstein's earliest documented victims, told investigators she remembered Maxwell referring to a film executive named "Harvey" while Farmer was inside Epstein's household in 1995. A 2026 FBI intake report released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, drawn from an anonymous tip and unverified, alleged that a woman who said she had been drugged woke up in a room with Weinstein present. The DOJ noted the tip was uncorroborated.

When the Weinstein story broke in October 2017, Zampolli occupied the overlap between both worlds. One week after the New York Times published its initial Weinstein investigation, Melissa Thompson, who had video and audio evidence of Weinstein assaulting her, received a phone call from Zampolli. She had met Weinstein through the same New York social circuit that connected Epstein's world to Hollywood.

On the call, which she recorded, Zampolli told her: "All of these girls are getting together and they are going to be represented by Brafman."

He then emailed her an introduction to attorney Alex Spiro, using an address at the Brafman firm. Thompson shared her evidence, believing she was dealing with lawyers representing victims. When Weinstein publicly announced Brafman was heading his defence, she texted Spiro. His response: "What? No. I don't work there." A federal RICO lawsuit filed in 2018 alleged Zampolli ran the same approach with at least two other Weinstein victims, and that during his call with Thompson he had described threats Weinstein had made against his own family, apparently to present himself as being on her side. Zampolli told the New York Times he had no recollection of the introduction emails. He has never been charged.

Zampolli's government role

Zampolli's relationship with Donald and Melania Trump remained close after they left office. In December 2020, in one of her final acts as first lady, Melania persuaded her husband to appoint Zampolli to the Kennedy Center board of trustees. In March 2025, Trump named him Special Envoy for Global Partnerships, a role that has taken him to Davos, Rome, and Budapest.

In that capacity, Zampolli publicly backed Russia's return to international sports competition, including the Paralympic Games, putting him at odds with European allies. In January 2026, he met Russia's sports minister during talks organised by the Olympic Council of Asia. When Russia's participation in the Paralympics was confirmed, he stated: "I believe sport is for everyone." Ukraine announced a boycott of the opening ceremony. Italy, the host nation, said it "strongly disagreed" with the decision.

In April 2026, he appeared in Budapest alongside Vice President JD Vance on a visit widely interpreted as a show of support for Viktor Orbán ahead of Hungary's parliamentary elections. The Washington Post reported, based on a document obtained by a European intelligence service, that Russia's foreign intelligence service had been running active operations to help Orbán win those elections, including internally proposing a staged assassination attempt on him to shift public sympathy. Orbán lost the elections days later.

Twenty years inside the Trump world

Ungaro and Zampolli were together for the better part of twenty years. Their son, Giovanni, was born in 2010. Both held United Nations ambassadorial appointments arranged through Zampolli's political connections: he represented the Caribbean island of Dominica, of which he is not a citizen, while she represented Grenada. They attended Trump's first inauguration in January 2017 and sat at Melania's table during the dinner. They rang in 2022 at Mar-a-Lago. Getty Images holds over three hundred photographs of Ungaro at diplomatic receptions, galas, and events alongside Zampolli, in rooms that regularly included figures from the Trump orbit.

Before Ungaro, Zampolli had lived with Edit Molnar, a Hungarian model, until at least 1996. Molnar was Melania Knauss's close friend at the agency. According to Zampolli's own account, it was Edit who persuaded Melania to attend the 1998 Kit Kat Club party where she met Trump. The woman who brought Melania into that room was Zampolli's previous girlfriend.

The Washington parties

When Zampolli relocated to Washington in October 2020 following his Kennedy Center appointment, he brought his New York lifestyle with him. He held court five days a week at a standing table at Café Milano and hosted after-parties at his 14,000-square-foot mansion, which featured a wine cellar, a sauna, a heated pool, and a dance floor. The walls carried a photograph of Tony Blair scribbling on the Chilcot Report, a painting of Barack Obama smoking, a photograph of George W. Bush struggling with a Rubik's Cube, and multiple oversized images of Trump.

Multiple attendees told Politico the scene was out of place for Washington, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. Zampolli was untroubled by the criticism. "Every invite said social distancing is available. There's a lot of room," he said. "There were no other events, so there was no other place to go. People would come and bring other people. There would be five losers and one good one, and that was the concept. I was generous. I was feeding a lot of freeloaders."

Three attendees independently described the crowds as skewing heavily toward older men and younger women. Guest lists included lobbyists for disreputable industries and diplomats from countries with poor human rights records, described by one attendee as "questionable folks."

One of Zampolli's own friends, who was among the dozen people he later sent explicit messages to, summarised the Washington period plainly: "He was the continuation of Trump's Sodom and Gomorrah. I told Paolo many times to cool off, this is not New York."

Ungaro and Giovanni were in New York throughout this period.

The affair

In 2021, Politico reported that Zampolli had circulated explicit messages and screenshots from an affair he had been conducting behind Ungaro's back to roughly a dozen Washington lobbyists and power brokers. In one message, he wrote directly to the woman: "Please stay away from my family, you are a pro, all city knows you are a working girl, since day one you said I had to pay you."

The woman denied it. "Any accusations about me being a 'working girl' or that I trade 'sex for money' are entirely false," she told Politico. "We had a brief consensual relationship, but I learned he was dishonest about the nature of his relationship with the mother of his son and no longer wanted to be involved with him."

Her age was not reported. What is established is that Zampolli chose to distribute sexually explicit material about a woman to his professional network, framing her as a sex worker attempting to extort him. She said they had a consensual affair that she ended when she discovered he had a partner and child at home. The recipients of those messages met them with silence. Several later told Politico they were relieved when he left Washington.

Ungaro did not leave immediately. She stayed for two more years. By 2023 she was done.

The arrest, the ICE call, and the deportation

In June 2025, Ungaro and her husband were arrested in Miami following an anonymous Crime Stoppers tip. The charges related to allegedly unlicensed cosmetic procedures at a medical spa in Aventura where she worked as a receptionist. Both pleaded not guilty.

Her husband held a green card and was released on bail. Ungaro's last temporary visa had expired in 2019. ICE placed her on a hold. Paolo Zampolli, on learning that Ungaro was in a Miami jail, contacted David Venturella, a senior ICE official. He told Venturella she was in the country illegally and that her detention would help him gain custody of their son. Venturella called ICE's Miami field office and noted during that call that the case mattered to someone close to the White House. ICE agents collected Ungaro before she could post bail.

Zampolli held a formal government appointment as Special Envoy for Global Partnerships. He used that position's proximity to the White House, through an enforcement official he could reach directly by phone, to ensure the woman contesting him in a custody dispute was detained before she could be released on bail. She spent three and a half months in detention before being transferred to a facility in Louisiana.

"It was a hall with more than 120 people, the floor was wet, there were no windows, four days without seeing the sun," she told El País. "I came out infested with lice."

She described an elderly woman handcuffed to a wheelchair, a detainee who miscarried and waited a prolonged period for medical care, and numerous people she said held valid residency permits. She eventually requested deportation to Brazil. She landed wearing her prison uniform, with no phone and no belongings.

"It was not enough for him to destroy me during 20 years of relationship," she told El País. "He wanted to destroy me again when I started a new life, when I got married."

Zampolli denied requesting her detention or seeking any favours. "Any suggestion that she was arrested and removed for political reasons or favors is FALSE," the Department of Homeland Security told the Times. A spokesperson for the First Lady said Melania had "no knowledge of, or involvement in" the personal affairs of Zampolli and Ungaro.

The posts

Between April 7 and 9, 2026, Ungaro posted a series of messages on X directed at Melania Trump's archived @FLOTUS45 account. They accumulated hundreds of thousands of views before being deleted.

"I have known you for 20 years. You knew I was detained in ICE. You were present in my life — every year on my son's birthday, even sending Secret Service and being the first to congratulate him, back in 2016. Something was clearly wrong, but I am not part of any evil mission involving children. So what did you do, Melania? You tried to involve me, but you failed — because I have character."
"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."

She directed a post at Pam Bondi, then days from defying a congressional subpoena:

"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?"

In a separate post, she addressed Donald Trump directly, threatening to "take legal action against you and your pedophile husband."

The posts were subsequently deleted from the @AmandaUngaroA account. Snopes, which reviewed screenshots before deletion, noted it could not independently verify the account belonged to Ungaro, and that the posts did not directly connect Melania Trump to Epstein. The El País interview, published three days later and confirmed as Ungaro's own words, mentioned Melania only once and focused almost entirely on the deportation and custody dispute. Following the posts, Ungaro indicated on X that she intended to appear on CNN International. CNN has not publicly confirmed any such booking. If the interview goes ahead, it will be her first broadcast appearance on a major U.S. network.

Melania Trump's statement

On April 9, 2026, Melania Trump walked into the Grand Foyer of the White House and delivered a prepared statement of approximately six minutes. The timing, CNN reported based on two people familiar with the matter, was driven by her monthslong preoccupation with press coverage and speculation about her ties to Epstein. Her senior adviser Marc Beckman told Reuters she had felt compelled to speak because "enough is enough. The lies must end." Her husband told the New York Times he knew she had wanted to address the subject at some point but did not know what she planned to say and did not watch the remarks live. White House officials were caught off guard, sources told ABC News.

"I am not Epstein's victim. Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump. I met my husband, by chance, at a New York City party in 1998. The first time I crossed paths with Epstein was in the year 2000, at an event Donald and I attended together. At the time, I had never met Epstein and had no knowledge of his criminal undertakings."

She addressed the 2002 email in which she had written to Ghislaine Maxwell complimenting a photograph and inviting her to call "when you are back in NY," signing it "Love, Melania." Maxwell had responded calling her "sweet pea." Melania described it as "casual correspondence" and "a trivial note," adding: "To be clear, I never had a relationship with Epstein or his accomplice, Maxwell."

Her lawyers had previously secured retractions and apologies from The Daily Beast, HarperCollins Publishers, and Democratic strategist James Carville over separate Epstein-related claims.

The statement closed with a call for congressional hearings with sworn survivor testimony. This undercut West Wing messaging aimed at moving past the Epstein story, and renewed press attention at a moment when it was competing with coverage of the war with Iran.

Epstein survivors Maria and Annie Farmer responded:

"What we want is accountability, transparency, and justice."

A group of thirteen Epstein survivors and relatives accused the first lady of shifting the burden onto survivors rather than those in power.

"Survivors have done their part. Now it's time for those in power to do theirs."

Both Rep. Nancy Mace and Rep. Robert Garcia endorsed the call for hearings. House Oversight Chairman James Comer committed on Fox News: "I agree with the first lady. We will have hearings." The statement arrived into a week already consumed by the Epstein investigation. Pam Bondi, fired by Trump on April 2 after reports he was dissatisfied with her handling of the DOJ's Epstein files, had been scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee on April 14 under a bipartisan subpoena. The DOJ informed the committee she would not appear, arguing the subpoena had named her in her capacity as attorney general and that she no longer held that office.

Rep. Nancy Mace responded: "My subpoena still stands... I did it by name, not as the sitting Attorney General." Rep. Robert Garcia threatened contempt charges.

The committee has also scheduled Bill Gates for a deposition on June 10. An NPR investigation in February found that documents naming Donald Trump had been withheld from the files, some of which were later published. What Trump said in 2002, in a New York magazine profile published in the same period that Ungaro was boarding Epstein's plane in Paris:

"I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."

Now it's war

A teenage girl was placed by her agent on a convicted child rapist's private aircraft. She survived that flight. She spent the next two decades inside a social world where the rapist, his procurer, the convicted trafficker, and the president's closest circle all occupied the same rooms, attended the same events, and built the same businesses. When she tried to use the American legal system to secure custody of her child, the man she had spent those two decades with used his White House access to contact a senior enforcement official, noted that the case mattered to someone close to power, and had her deported before she could post bail.

Zampolli remains Trump's Special Envoy for Global Partnerships. He told Sky News he is "ready to testify in front of Congress if I'm asked" about how Donald and Melania met. He has denied requesting Ungaro's detention. He has not been charged with any crime in connection with Jeffrey Epstein or any other matter. He has not been subpoenaed. He is one of two people in the inner circle of the current Trump White House with documented connections to the Epstein-Brunel modelling pipeline. The other is the president himself.

The congressional investigation around the Epstein files meanwhile continues to stall. Pam Bondi, fired by Trump on April 2, defied her April 14 deposition date. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have threatened contempt proceedings. Rep. Robert Garcia said: "Let's reschedule it — and if we don't hear back in the next couple of days, we're going to begin the contempt proceeding." Three of the five Republicans who originally backed the bipartisan subpoena have since expressed resistance to joining a contempt motion, questioning whether testimony from Bondi would add anything. Chairman Comer said he expected to speak with her personal attorney and hoped to have her before the committee "very soon." Garcia has also warned that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who as deputy attorney general was closely involved in the Epstein file releases, may face his own subpoena, though Democrats currently lack the votes to force it.

Ungaro has told O Globo she has been asked to testify before the House Oversight Committee. She has not been formally subpoenaed. Whether she could do so from Brazil is unresolved. She has also indicated on X that she intends to appear on CNN International, though CNN has not confirmed any booking.

"I kept quiet for years," she told El País. "It was not enough for him to destroy me during 20 years: he wanted to destroy me again when I started a new life."

"Now it's war," Ungaro said from Rio. "We'll see who wins."

This article is part of an ongoing investigative series on the Epstein files, the networks they document, and what genuine accountability would, in collaboration with OpDeathEaters.

OpDeathEaters is an open-source, investigation into the global child rape and trafficking industry, founded by Heather Marsh in November 2014. Its objective is an independent, victim led, internationally linked tribunal and inquiry operating outside all institutions that may themselves be under investigation for complicity. Marsh has been repeatedly censored for speaking about the need for this inquiry, including at the Oxford union in February 2018. The opdeatheaters campaign has been targeted continually for well over a decade by social media censorship, the creation of decoy ops, such as Pizzagate, and QAnon, and other sophisticated coercion methods.

The work is open to everyone. OpDeathEaters needs researchers to collect, fact-check, and distribute verified testimony and evidence; people in every country to build public support for independent inquiries; journalists and lawyers willing to work with protected sources; and anyone able to translate, amplify, and organise locally. Evidence and witnesses are widely available. The goal is a global network, autonomous to each region but internationally connected.

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