‘Trump’s Sodom and Gomorrah’ Melania pal leaves DC amid scandal after appointment to Kennedy Center board
Models and bottles: When Melania’s pal Paolo blew through D.C.
Few people are more intertwined with Donald and Melania Trump than Paolo Zampolli. A onetime modeling agent, he represented Melania in her former career, then introduced her to her future husband at a party he hosted in 1998 at the Kit Kat Club.
This is the story of what happened when a notorious New York City playboy not named DONALD TRUMP tried to replicate his act in Washington. With a four-story townhouse in Union Square and a standing table at Cipriani restaurant in Manhattan, the 51-year-old Zampolli managed to become both a fixture on “Page Six” and an ambassador for the tiny island nation of Dominica to the U.N.
After Trump took office, Zampolli, one of Melania’s few close friends, spent multiple New Year’s Eves with the first lady and was a frequent visitor at the White House and Mar-a-Lago. In October 2020, he relocated from New York City to D.C. with much fanfare. A story in Page Six announcing the move noted that he would be bringing along a chef from Cipriani to cook at the $16 million mansion he rented on Foxhall Road.
But Zampolli’s high-flying, models-and-bottles lifestyle didn’t go over well with the tight-laced politicians and staffers with whom he sought to make connections.
He became known for his garish tastes and his affinity for entertaining “questionable folks,” as one attendee described them — lobbyists for disreputable industries and diplomats for countries with lackluster human rights records. Even the artwork on display caused offense: a photograph of TONY BLAIR scribbling on the Chilcot Report, a painting of BARACK OBAMA smoking, a photograph of GEORGE W. BUSH struggling with a Rubik’s Cube and multiple massive images of Trump.
That attendee and two others described the scene at Zampolli’s mansion — featuring a wine cellar, a sauna, a heated pool, a dance floor and crowds that skewed heavily toward older men and younger women — as too wild for the environs, especially during Covid-19.
But Zampolli told Playbook, “Every invite said social distancing is available. There’s a lot of room — the house was 14,000 square feet.” He added: “There were no [other] events, so there was no other place to go. People would come and bring other people. There would be five losers and one good one, and that was the concept. I was generous. I was feeding a lot of freeloaders.”
A FINAL FLEX BY MELANIA: Trump’s loss marked the beginning of the end for Zampolli’s stay in Washington. However, that wasn’t immediately apparent. In December, in one of her final acts as first lady, Melania persuaded her husband to appoint Zampolli to the prestigious Kennedy Center board.
Zampolli had big plans for the venerable institution, such as franchising it, setting up a PICASSO exhibit and using the rooftop for sports-related events. But so far, none of those things have happened. Instead, he carried on the way he lived in Manhattan, holding court five days per week at a standing table at Cafe Milano and hosting after-parties at his mansion.
During Trump’s final days in office, Zampolli had some influential outgoing White House staffers and close confidantes of Trump at his home for events. But shortly before a party to celebrate JOE BIDEN’s inauguration, he removed most of his Trump portraits on the advice of a friend. The party was lackluster, with not a single influential guest from the Biden administration in attendance, according to two attendees.
He was “sort of a man without a country after Trump lost,” said a regular at his parties.
Zampolli did host a “We are the Oceans” event at the Kennedy Center in June that was attended by Sen. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D-R.I.), KATHLEEN KENNEDY, BROCK PIERCE, Organization of American States Secretary-General LUIS ALMAGRO and Portuguese Ambassador DOMINIGO TEIXEIRA DE ABREU FEZAS VITAL, among others.
MOVING OUT: But just a month later, Zampolli was packing up his house and heading back to New York. The move came after he ended a relationship in D.C. that threatened to ruin his family still living in New York. Zampolli is not married but has a partner of 17 years and a son.
In a series of text messages sent in July to a dozen lobbyists, business owners and other power players in D.C., he forwarded a screengrab of exchanges between himself and a woman, in which he described his sexual encounters with her in graphic detail. Zampolli went so far as to describe her as a “working girl” — a claim for which he offered no factual support and which several sources said was false. Zampolli himself now says he did not pay the woman for sex.
“Please stay away from my family, you are a pro, all [sic] city knows you are a working girl, since day one you said I had to pay you,” Zampolli said in one message to the woman.
The texts were shared with Playbook by multiple recipients.
The woman, whom we are not naming, said in a statement to Playbook: “Any accusations about me being a ‘working girl’ or that I trade ‘sex for money’ are entirely false. In no way, shape or form, did I partake in any exchange of sex for money with Paolo Zampolli. We had a brief consensual relationship, but I learned he was dishonest about the nature of his relationship with the mother of his son and no longer wanted to be involved or associated with him. He proceeded to verbally threaten me by saying false things about my character. I blocked him from all form of communications.”
Zampolli, for his part, told us he “truly felt blackmailed, and that she was somebody who wanted to hurt my family.” He said he was warning his friends about the woman in case she tried to do the same to them.
‘THIS IS NOT NEW YORK’: His texts were met with silence by the recipients. Now, his former friends say they’re relieved that Zampolli — who remains one of the few Trump appointees to a board who has not been asked to step down — left town.
“He was the continuation of Trump’s Sodom and Gomorrah,” said one of Zampolli’s friends who was on the text chain. “I told Paolo many times to cool off, this is not New York.”
Zampolli told Playbook he left D.C. because his lease expired, and there were fewer people to meet in the city since they left town for their summer breaks.
“I did not run away from this girl,” he said.
He had one last word: “Why did you get this tip three months later? Because there’s no more free food and free booze. They have nothing to do.”