Melania Trump's Surprise Epstein Statement Opens Pandora's Box — And Pulls In Amanda Ungaro
Melania Trump made one of the most unexpected public statements of her time as first lady Thursday afternoon, walking into the Grand Foyer of the White House to deliver a six-minute address about Jeffrey Epstein that nobody in Washington had seen coming — and that has since reopened every question her husband's administration had spent months trying to close.
Standing before cameras, the first lady said the lies linking her to the disgraced Jeffrey Epstein needed to end, calling the individuals spreading them devoid of ethical standards. She stated she was never Epstein's victim, that he did not introduce her to Donald Trump, and that her name has never appeared in court documents, depositions, victim statements, or FBI interviews surrounding the Epstein matter.
Melania Trump, born Melanija Knavs on April 26, 1970, in Yugoslavia, is 55 years old. She grew up in Slovenia, became a model as a teenager, and eventually made her way to New York through the fashion world. In 1995, she met Italian modeling agent Paolo Zampolli in Milan, who sponsored her immigration to the United States in 1996 and introduced her to Donald Trump at a party in September 1998. That meeting — and who exactly facilitated it — sits at the center of the Epstein controversy now swirling around the White House.
In her statement, Melania said the first time she crossed paths with Epstein was in the year 2000, at an event she attended with Donald Trump, and that she had no knowledge of his criminal undertakings at the time. She also addressed a previously reported email she sent to Ghislaine Maxwell, describing it as nothing more than casual correspondence and rejecting any deeper characterization of that exchange.
In the email — sent in 2002 — Melania complimented Maxwell on a profile of Epstein that had appeared in New York magazine and invited her to call when she returned to New York, signing it "Love, Melania." Maxwell responded by calling her "sweet pea." The first lady did not deny the email existed but insisted it carried no meaningful weight.
Her senior adviser Marc Beckman said she came forward because enough was enough, and that if she could not stick up for herself and defend her reputation, nobody else would. A spokesperson for the first lady's office said the West Wing was aware she planned to make a statement, but sources told ABC News that White House officials were caught off guard by the topic. President Trump said in a subsequent interview that he did not know anything about it ahead of her appearance.
CNN noted the statement was all the more remarkable since there had been no widespread public speculation specifically about Melania in recent days, making its timing difficult to explain and its effect — reviving the Epstein story — the opposite of what it appeared designed to achieve.
Woven through the entire episode is the figure of Amanda Ungaro, a Brazilian former model who shared elite social circles with Melania for years. Ungaro, 41, and her then-boyfriend Paolo Zampolli were close to Trump and Melania for years, regularly dining with them at Mar-a-Lago. Moving in the same jet-set circles meant both women came into contact with Epstein and his coterie. Ungaro herself was flown to New York on Epstein's plane as a 17-year-old teenage model, with her agent at the time being Jean-Luc Brunel, a later-charged alleged procurer for Epstein.
Ungaro was deported to Brazil in 2025 after being arrested on fraud charges in Miami. The New York Times reported that Paolo Zampolli — now Trump's special envoy for global partnerships — contacted a senior ICE official to relay that Ungaro was in the country illegally, a move that appeared connected to their ongoing custody battle over their teenage son. Zampolli denied asking for ICE to intervene. Ungaro, writing on social media before Melania's statement, warned she would tear down what she called a corrupt system, saying she was not afraid and suggesting there were things she knew that the first couple should worry about.
Melania closed her statement by calling on Congress to hold a public hearing centered on Epstein's survivors, giving each victim the opportunity to testify under oath and have her testimony permanently entered into the Congressional Record. Epstein survivors responded with mixed reactions — some welcoming the call, others saying it shifted the burden onto victims rather than the officials and institutions that failed to stop Epstein for decades. Bipartisan voices in Congress moved quickly to express support for the proposed hearing, though no date or formal mechanism has been announced.
