Tag: corruption

The Trump administration’s dramatic reversal with respect to the Jeffrey Epstein case continues to confuse and enthrall, with President Trump still doubling down that the entire “Epstein thing” is a “Democrat hoax.” While Democrats certainly have sought to take advantage of situation for partisan ends, the reversal in rhetoric –– particularly after transparency in the Epstein case was made an important part of Trump’s 2024 campaign –– has seemingly defied explanation. Indeed, the timing of the reversal, which occurred after a protracted delay and then final reneging on releasing files about the case, has been hard for many to swallow.

Amid the fall-out from the administration’s about-face, the Trump administration has sought to mitigate the failure to “release the files” by publishing interviews with Ghislaine Maxwell (who has been desperately seeking a pardon or commuted sentence) and by issuing subpoenas to Bill and Hillary Clinton, a clear effort to divert “transparency” in the case into something more politically favorable to Republicans. 

However, as posited in Unlimited Hangout’s series “First Friends,” Trump’s effort to alter the narrative around the Epstein case may be aimed at shielding, not only potentially himself, but people in his close social circle, including at least one figure currently serving in his administration. That figure, Paolo Zampolli –– the administration’s current Special Envoy for Global Partnerships –– is the subject of this investigation. 

In Part I of this series, we met one of Trump’s closest friends from Italy: Flavio Briatore, a P2 lodge and Italian mafia-linked businessman with ties to prominent Victoria’s Secret Angels, at least one of whom he introduced to Epstein. In this second installment, the connections of Zampolli, another Italian close to both Trump and Briatore, are the focus. Zampolli has been in the news recently, not for the backdoor wheeling-and-dealing of his new, official U.S. government post, but because Trump and his wife Melania claim to have been first introduced by Zampolli amid assertions to the contrary that claim it had been Epstein.

As this investigation will show, Zampolli is deeply corrupt. From his beginnings as a protégé for the controversial modeling mogul John Casablancas, a man known for his appetite for what he called “child women,” Zampolli grew his modeling empire with money from Silvio Berlusconi, the corrupt Italian Prime Minister (and close friend of Flavio Briatore) who was forced to resign for his sexual escapades with minors while in office. Zampolli would later follow Casablanca’s example and marry his wife when she was 19, having met her not long after she had flown as an under-age teen on Epstein’s “Lolita Express.” 

After leaving the world of modeling to work for Donald Trump in the early 2000s, Zampolli would become closely affiliated with the Clintons as well as the United Nations, where he worked on their climate change initiatives and on the development of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. In particular, Zampolli was part of the team that developed SDG 14 “Life Under Water” alongside Stuart Beck, a figure closely tied to CIA regime change operations in Palau, as well as none other than Ghislaine Maxwell and her TerraMar project. 

Yet, that is not all Zampolli would accomplish at the UN, as he would figure prominently in a major UN financing scandal and also boasted close ties to suspect citizenship-by-investment schemes that would later see one of his close colleagues arrested and another dead under exceedingly bizarre circumstances. Those colleagues had been taking bribes from an organized crime and CCP-linked Chinese billionaire who was once at the center of the scandal that directly intersects with most of Jeffrey Epstein’s seventeen visits to the Clinton White House.

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