Welcome to back to The Red Letter.
When I spoke with V Spehar today, we kept coming back to something bigger than tabloid intrigue. Jeffrey Epstein didn’t just orbit Donald Trump socially — he moved through the same rarefied modeling ecosystem that helped launch Melania Trump’s career. Photographer Antoine Verglas shot Melania roughly a dozen times, including some of her most iconic nude spreads. He later remained in contact with Epstein after Epstein’s 2008 conviction. Emails show exchanges about nude shoots. There’s the forwarded article about scopolamine — the so-called “devil’s breath” that eliminates free will and can make a person child-like. There are dozens of blanked-out files we still haven’t seen. It’s not a smoking gun, but it is a web.
None of this suggests Melania committed a crime. But if Congress is now demanding testimony from figures connected to Epstein’s orbit, including Hillary Clinton, then the question becomes one of consistency. Epstein intersected with Donald Trump’s world and with the modeling pipeline that elevated Melania from Slovenia to the pages of GQ and Maxim and eventually to the White House. If investigators are mapping the full ecosystem that enabled him — political, financial, cultural — does the former first lady’s vantage point matter?
This shouldn’t be partisan. Bill and Hillary Clinton have testified. If transparency is the standard, it applies evenly. The question isn’t about spectacle. It’s whether anyone who occupied overlapping space in Epstein’s universe, however peripheral, has information that could help explain how he was able to operate, unchecked, for so long.
Thank you Lev Parnas, Theresa Lease, Wendy E, CO, Sarah E. Burr, and many others for tuning into my live video with V Spehar! Join me for my next live video in the app.
