Who introduced melania to donald trump

1. The traditional, public story: Paolo Zampolli made the introduction

For decades the accepted origin story in biographies and profiles has been that Paolo Zampolli, a Milanese model agent who later worked with the Trump Organization, hosted or arranged the 1998 encounter where Melania and Donald first met, and that Zampolli sponsored Melania’s early U.S. work — an account recorded in encyclopedia-style entries and magazine profiles ^{[1] [2]}.

2. Melania’s own version: a chance meeting at a party

In her 2024 memoir and in interviews she has described meeting Donald at a party where a man approached her table, introduced himself as Donald Trump, and sat down to talk — a personal narrative that places the initial contact as a direct exchange between the two rather than an introduction orchestrated by Epstein ^{[3] [5]}.

3. The FBI file and the Epstein assistant: a conflicting claim emerges

An 11‑page, heavily redacted FBI document contains a statement from a former Jeffrey Epstein assistant saying that Epstein “introduced MELANIA TRUMP to DONALD TRUMP,” language later cited by The Daily Beast and widely summarized in other outlets; those files also reference Zampolli’s business dealings with Epstein, creating a tangled paper trail but offering a different named introducer in official documents ^{[3] [6] [4]}.

4. What the parties involved have said in public since the files surfaced

Donald Trump has flatly denied Epstein’s role and told media that “Jeffrey Epstein had nothing to do with Melania and introducing [us],” while Melania’s legal team has threatened litigation over public allegations linking Epstein to the couple’s meeting, underscoring the couple’s rejection of the Epstein-introduction allegation ^{[7] [4]}.

5. How reporters and biographers place the players: overlapping social circles, not a neat line of causation

Investigative reporting and biographers note overlapping social and professional circles — Zampolli as Melania’s agent, Epstein’s contacts in modeling and Manhattan social life — and some writers (including Michael Wolff) have argued that these networks make multiple introductions plausible, even if the specific “who introduced whom” detail remains contested ^{[8] [9]}.

6. Assessing the evidence and the limits of the record

The strongest established facts are the contradictions: Zampolli is widely credited in contemporaneous reporting and later profiles with introducing the pair ^{[1] [2]}, Melania’s memoir describes meeting Trump directly at a party ^{[5] [3]}, and an FBI document quotes a former Epstein assistant saying Epstein made the introduction ^{[3] [4]}; the FBI record is heavily redacted and the assistant’s identity and corroboration are not provided in the publicly released pages, meaning the claim sits alongside, not definitively atop, the other accounts ^[3].

7. Conclusion: an answer with caveats

The simplest, publicly communicated answer is that Paolo Zampolli has long been credited with introducing Melania to Donald Trump and both Melania and Donald have rejected claims that Epstein did so, yet the newly disclosed, redacted FBI notes reporting a former Epstein assistant’s statement saying Epstein introduced them create a credible alternative allegation that cannot be fully verified from the available documents; therefore, the record contains two competing narratives — Zampolli (traditional account) and Epstein (asserted in redacted FBI material) — with the available public evidence unable to conclusively prove which person, if either, directly made the introduction ^{[1] [2] [5] [3]}.