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Melania’s Matchmaker Fired from Trump Job in MAGA Blood Feud

He claims to have brought the first couple together—but now he’s being thrown out of the State Department.

The modeling agent turned presidential envoy who claims he introduced Donald Trump to Melania has been fired from his official role amid a bitter internal feud.

Paolo Zampolli, a longtime ally of the President and First Lady was notified Thursday that his appointment as the administration’s special envoy for global partnerships had been terminated, a U.S. official told the Daily Beast.

The move comes after months-long, and increasingly public, bitter clash with Christopher Landau, the deputy secretary of Marco Rubio’s State Department, who had accused Zampolli of exceeding his authority.

The dispute, first detailed in emails obtained by Politico, was punctuated by threats of dismissal, allegations of misconduct and accusations of leaking damaging information to the press.

“I am hereby ordering you–once again–to immediately stop all work on ANY issues not directly tied to cultural diplomacy, including every one of the issues you mentioned in your recent emails,” Landau wrote to Zampolli in one email from Nov. 14, 2025.

Zampolli’s departure also follows a revelations in the The Daily Beast’s sister investigative Substack, PunchUp, which disclosed that he named in a lawsuit filed by tech entrepreneur Victoria Drake, 33, who alleged he drugged and sexually assaulted her at his Manhattan town house in October 2023.

Zampolli, 56, has emphatically denied the allegations, accusing Drake of making false statements and threatening to countersue her for $100 million. He has also filed a criminal complaint against her in Rome, threatening defamation.

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In a lengthy statement following his departure, Zampolli sought to portray the move as a natural return to the business world, rather than a dismissal.

“Special Envoys appointments are for one year. President Trump extended it for more than six months,” he told the Daily Beast.

“Years ago, he told me I was too good for modeling and brought me into real estate. Now he told me: ‘Why do you want to work in government when you can close all these deals?’ The President is always right.”

He added that it was “time for the next chapter - back to business, building relationships and closing deals. President Trump changed my life once. He just did it again.”

The departure marks an extraordinary turn for a former modeling agent whose access to Trump helped turn personal connections into an official diplomatic role, but whose controversies ultimately threatened to overshadow it.

Zampolli is often credited for introducing Melania, then Slovenian model Melania Knauss, to Trump at a New York Fashion Week party he hosted at the Kit Kat Club in 1998.

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In an interview with the Daily Beast earlier this year, he recalled telling the pair: “Melania meet Donald, Donald meet Melania,” before leaving them to mingle with his 300 guests.

Melania’s memoir also recounts meeting Trump at a New York party that year, but not that it was Zampolli who introduced them. The details in the book point to Zampolli as the organizer of the party.

His job as presidential envoy took him around the globe - from the Balkans, where he successfully lobbied for a park in Romania to be named after Trump, to sitting alongside Vice President JD Vance in Hungary as they sought to prop up the election prospects of far-right leader Viktor Orbán.

His other role as a Kennedy Center board member also places him at the center of the president’s attempts to put his name on the storied institution.

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Zampolli’s connection with the Trumps thrust him into the spotlight again in April, when Melania delivered a surprise statement at the White House forcefully denying that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had introduced her to her future husband.

He publicly backed her account, volunteering to testify before Congress that he had played matchmaker. His own past association with Epstein, however, attracted scrutiny: the pair discussed buying a modeling agency together in the early 2000s, and Zampolli’s name appears in the Epstein files, but he has never been accused of participating in Epstein’s crimes, and the documents do not establish wrongdoing by him.

But Zampolli’s political troubles have extended beyond the State Department feud and Drake’s lawsuit.

His former partner, Brazilian model Amanda Ungaro, has accused him of using his Washington connections to help trigger her detention by immigration authorities amid a bitter custody dispute.

He has denied involvement, telling the Daily Beast earlier: “My ex is a criminal and a psychopath. She was arrested. She was illegal.”

The presidential envoy also raised eyebrows in the state department last week when he wrote an op-ed in the Italian publication La Sicilia arguing that sex with robots was inevitable.

Therefore, he opined, America should pave the way to ensure safeguards for privacy, minors, and emotional manipulation.

The White House declined to comment on Zampolli’s departure, referring the matter to the Department of State.

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Farrah TomazinPolitical Correspondent

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