US president Donald Trump‘s longtime biographer Michael Wolff has reignited controversy by claiming that Jeffrey Epstein played a key role in introducing Melania Trump to her future husband. Speaking on The Daily Beast podcast, Wolff said Melania was “very involved” in Epstein’s social circle when she was first introduced to Trump in 1998. According to Wolff, the connection was made through Paolo Zampolli, founder of ID Models, who helped Melania move to the US. They met in 1998. “She’s introduced by a model agent, both of whom Trump and Epstein are involved with… Epstein knew her well,” Wolff said. He also questioned Melania’s ties to what he called a “culture of models of indeterminate age.” Melania, however, has denied the Epstein angle. She insists she met Trump at the Kit Kat Klub in New York, where she had gone with a friend. In her book Melania, she describes how Trump, already twice divorced, was there with a date but spent the evening talking to her. “It was a refreshing departure from the usual superficial small talk,” she writes. Despite Trump’s efforts to distance himself from Epstein, a photo from 2000 shows Donald and Melania at Mar-a-Lago alongside Epstein and Maxwell. Epstein himself once claimed that he introduced the couple.Donald Trump’s links to Jeffrey Epstein came to the spotlight after The Wall Street Journal reported that attorney general Pam Bondi told Trump during a May briefing that his name had come up in justice department files connected to Epstein.