Facts For Working People: The Trump/Epstein Affair Just Won't Go Away

Thursday, October 29, 2026

The Trump/Epstein Affair Just Won't Go Away

Rachel Hurley

So, House Judiciary Democrats dropped a new 52-page staff report on the Epstein files this week - and I finally got through it.

The report lays out what they call "the case against Donald Trump emerging in the Epstein files and DOJ's desperate efforts to cover it up."

They're calling for an independent special counsel to dig into Epstein's co-conspirators and the DOJ's cover-up. They also say Trump's attorney general may have committed "criminal obstruction of justice."

The report accuses Trump of being "an active participant" in Jeffrey Epstein's abuse of young women and girls in the '90s. It also accuses the DOJ of covering it up.

It details new claims from Beatrice Keul, a former Swiss pageant contestant. She told committee staff that Trump raped her at New York's Plaza Hotel in 1993, and she called the assault "brutal."

The report also cites an FBI search that tied Trump and Epstein to a 2007 "exploitation of minors" case number. A whistleblower says documents linked to that case are being withheld.

It also points to a 2009 document that the DOJ blacked out. In it, Trump reportedly said Epstein was "never asked to leave" Mar-a-Lago. That contradicts his long-running claim that he kicked Epstein out.

There's a lot of other stuff in the report - and it also sheds new light on a rumor that won't die about how Donald Trump met his third wife.

Every love story has a "how we met" moment, and the Trumps' story starts in a model apartment on Varick Street in NYC.

I've written about Paolo Zampolli before - but if you're new here, he was an Italian modeling agent in the '90s. He put the young women he brought to New York in that apartment, and he's been in the Epstein and Trump orbit for decades.

The new report says one of those women was a Slovenian model named Melania Knauss.

Another was a 19-year-old Polish model who later went to work for Jeffrey Epstein. A third was an 18-year-old who told the FBI that Epstein raped her when she went to his house to give a massage.

All three women had the same agent, and they all lived at the same address.

The report also covers five women who say Trump raped or sexually assaulted them while Epstein was around - and that's what the press has focused on, as it should.

But there's a part on pages 11 to 14 that almost nobody is talking about. The story of how the President met his wife now has two possible matchmakers, and both of them show up in a congressional report about sex trafficking.

You've probably heard the first version.

Zampolli says he introduced Donald and Melania at a party he threw at the Kit Kat Club in September 1998. Melania tells the same story in her 2024 book. In April, she told reporters that Epstein didn't introduce her to her husband and that they met by chance at a party. Zampolli backed her up and said he'd tell Congress the same thing under oath.

The FBI has a different version.

In 2019, a woman who used to work for Epstein told the FBI that Epstein introduced Melania to Donald. That same FBI file says Zampolli was trying to buy a big modeling agency called Elite with Epstein. That part's true, by the way. In 2004, the two men teamed up to try to buy Elite's New York office, but the deal fell through.

Anyway - my biggest takeaway about Epstein introducing Melania to Trump is - if true - there’s a very good chance that he was gifting her to him. Extrapolate what you will from that.

The report says Epstein used to stop by Zampolli's agency when models were trying out for jobs. He'd flip through their photo books and look at pictures of girls in swimsuit bottoms. Which sounds like he was flipping through a to-go menu.

The report also says Zampolli had an affair with the 19-year-old model he'd signed before she went to work for Epstein. The DOJ blacked out that line before it released the file.

You might recall that Zampolli worked for the Trump administration at the time, so the DOJ was hiding a detail about one of its own guys. Democrats now say Zampolli and Trump "may have been co-conspirators," which means they may have helped Epstein commit his crimes.

Zampolli's name also comes up five years before the Kit Kat Club party.

Remember Beatrice Keul? She told congressional staff that at that 1993 pageant, Trump promised her a visa and said his friend "Paolo" would handle it.

A few minutes later, she says, Epstein walked up and called himself "Don's best friend." That's the same day she says Trump raped her in a suite at the Plaza.

Then there's Amanda Ungaro.

She was Zampolli's partner for almost 20 years, and they have a son together. She also says Epstein was the one who introduced the Trumps.

You might remember her name - cause she doesn't live in the U.S. anymore. The NYT reported that Ungaro was arrested in Miami on fraud charges last year, and then Zampolli contacted a top ICE official about her case. ICE picked her up before she could post bail, and the government sent her back to Brazil. Zampolli says he never asked ICE to do that. DHS says she was deported because her visa had run out.

The Trumps have kept Zampolli close for 30 years. The report says Trump put him on the Kennedy Center board because Melania asked him to.

Then last year, Trump gave him a job as a special envoy, which is kind of like a traveling ambassador. Zampolli flew all over the world on the taxpayers' dime, and he even went to Hungary with VP JD Vance.

Last month, a young Republican model sued him and said he drugged and raped her in 2023. On Oct. 15, after a nasty email fight with a top State Department official, he got fired.

That happened just 11 days before this report came out. Zampolli didn't seem too upset about it. "President Trump changed my life once," he said. "He just did it again."

But who knows how this will all play out now. If Dems win the midterms - I expect they will call Zampolli in for a little chat.

When Trump ran in 2024, he told people he'd release the Epstein files. Instead, he made his old defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, the AG. Blanche interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's partner in crime, and he stopped her three times when she started talking about a girl who had connected Trump to Epstein. And Blanche's DOJ blacked out an FBI file to protect a guy the White House fired anyway.

I'm hoping more people will finally have the same "aha" moment I had right after I graduated high school. That's when I walked into a bar and saw my high school crush making out with another guy.

I’d heard a rumor or two while we were still in school - but I dismissed them because it wasn’t the reality I wanted.

When I saw it with my own eyes - I felt so dumb - not because he turned out to be gay - because I had failed to see something so obvious.

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Sources

https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/.../judiciary...

https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/.../2026-10.hjc...

https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-jeffrey-epstein.../

https://newrepublic.com/.../democrats-50-page-report...

https://thehill.com/.../6172897-house-democrats-trump.../

https://www.thedailybeast.com/dems-plot-to-make-trumps...