First Lady Melania Trump is threatening legal action after a former friend publicly challenged the long-standing story of how she met Donald Trump and raised new questions about her ties to Jeffrey Epstein through a mutual associate.
According to a demand letter obtained by COURIER, Melania Trump’s attorneys accused journalist Zev Shalev and former diplomat Amanda Ungaro of making false and defamatory statements during a YouTube interview discussing Zampolli, who claims he introduced Donald and Melania Trump in the late 1990s.
Ungaro, who previously dated Zampolli, disputes that version of events. She alleges Zampolli falsely claimed credit for introducing the future president and first lady to distance the couple from scrutiny over Jeffrey Epstein during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The interview focused on Zampolli’s decades-long relationship with both the Trumps and Epstein, as well as Melania Trump’s continued ties to him after Donald Trump returned to the White House.
Trump’s lawyers claim the interview caused the first lady “overwhelming financial and reputational harm” and are demanding that the statements be retracted.
Among the claims challenged by Melania’s legal team was the title of the YouTube video, “First Lady Spy Scandal,” even though the word “spy” was reportedly never mentioned during the discussion itself.
The attorneys also objected to comments by Shalev questioning why Melania Trump had publicly defended Zampolli and suggesting she had encouraged President Trump to appoint him to senior diplomatic posts.
At the center of the dispute is Paolo Zampolli, a longtime Trump confidant who now serves in the administration. Zampolli has consistently maintained that he—not Epstein—introduced Donald and Melania Trump in 1998.
Ungaro argues otherwise, claiming his account was crafted to shield the Trumps from uncomfortable questions about Epstein’s social circle.
Free speech advocates say legal threats like this have increasingly become a tool used by powerful public figures to discourage criticism.
Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), told COURIER that defamation threats are often used to chill constitutionally protected speech.
“Defamation lawsuits and threats of litigation have too often been used by the powerful as a tool to stifle constitutionally protected criticism,” Terr said. “President Trump and his allies have repeatedly employed that tactic.”
Terr added that the demand letter broadly labels the disputed statements as defamatory while offering little explanation as to why they meet the legal standard, instead asserting that the speakers knowingly made false claims.
Melania Trump has aggressively defended her reputation for years. She also threatened legal action against People magazine after it published an account from a woman who accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her in 2005 while Melania was pregnant.
Her latest signals that the Trump family’s battle over Epstein-related scrutiny, and the people connected to it, is far from over.
