Donald and Melania Trump Were Introduced by Some Other New York Businessman, Not Epstein

The controversy surrounding Jeffrey Epstein has continued to dog President Donald Trump, even as he has refused to offer much information about what his Justice Department discovered.

As the controversy continues to draw attention, rumors have also begun to circulate that Trump and his wife, Melania, were actually introduced to one another by Epstein.

Epstein and Trump were friends, and that friendship was pretty well-documented in public. Following the allegation that Trump and Melania met thanks to Epstein — which Hunter Biden repeated — many want to know how they actually met.

Here's what we know.

Back when Trump and Melania first made their relationship public, Trump said that Paolo Zampolli, a New York businessman, had been the one to introduce them, according to NewsNation. While that information is not widely available, multiple outlets have reported that they met at a party in 1998, before Trump was divorced from Marla Maples but after the two of them had separated.

The rumor that Epstein had introduced Melania and Trump appears to have stemmed from a claim author Michael Wolff made during an interview with The Daily Beast.

Wolff has written books about the Trump administration, but that claim has not been corroborated, and The Daily Beast eventually took down the interview, per Poynter.

Melania has threatened to sue Hunter Biden for over $1 billion for the claim, which seems to suggest that it's false.

Although it seems like Melania and Trump did indeed meet without Epstein's involvement, Hunter has nonetheless said that he will not retract his comment suggesting that the two of them were introduced by Epstein.

“F--k that. That’s not going to happen,” Hunter said when asked by interviewer Andrew Callaghan if he would take back what he said.

Melania, for her part, appears to be quite upset by the allegation that Epstein introduced her to her husband.

During an interview with Brian Kilmeade on Fox News Radio on Aug. 14, the president said that she was "very upset," and Trump clarified that Epstein had nothing to do with them meeting one another.

“Jeffrey Epstein had nothing to do with Melania and introducing [us],” Trump said. “But they do that to demean. They make up stories.”

What's true regardless of how Trump and Melania met, though, is that Epstein and Trump had a long friendship that extended past the time when Trump and Melania met in 1998.

Most accounts of that relationship suggest that Epstein and Trump had a falling out in the mid-2000s, although the exact reason for that falling out remains unclear.

So, while Epstein might not have had anything to do with Melania's relationship with Trump, the two people were certainly in Trump's life at the same time.

What's less clear, though, is whether Melania and Epstein ever met or interacted, and what kind of relationship they might have had, if any.