In light of current events, I’ve been reading up the “ancient” history of Trump’s involvement with modeling—and especially the use of foreign/undocumented/younger women and girls in the industry during the twenty-teens. The article “Modeling was just the machine. Epstein was just the middleman” (7/2025) details exactly how the modeling world created a cover for sex crimes:
In the late 20th century, John Casablancas (founder of Elite Model Management) built the original model: turn teenage girls into glamorized assets. Jean-Luc Brunel took it international, founding MC2 and receiving at least $1 million from Jeffrey Epstein to expand operations. Paolo Zampolli cornered the visa angle, using U.S. immigration loopholes to bring in young foreign models — often from Eastern Europe and South America — under false pretenses.
Then came Mister Donald Trump.
(I’ve argued elsewhere that Hugh Hefner actually developed the original model for targeting low-income, young and otherwise vulnerable girls for jobs for which they were paid very little—but let’s be honest, older/more powerful men have been exploiting young women and girls for centuries.)
This circle of five men illustrates a toxic pattern of using and abusing young women and girls. And some of them are still with us. Let’s take a look:
1) John Casablancas ran Elite Model Management and was intimately involved with Trump’s modeling agency. They both enjoyed parties with younger women on display. Oh, and the Guardian also reports that:
The stories we have heard suggest that Casablancas, and some of the men in his orbit, used the contest to engage in sexual relationships with vulnerable young models. Some of these allegations amount to sexual harassment, abuse or exploitation of teenage girls; others are more accurately described as rape.
Here’s a story written in August 2017 on our own Daily Kos about her personal experience as a teenage model for Casablancas:
“I Was a Child Model for Trump’s Buddy Casablancas and it wasn’t Pretty”
As they say, “You’re known by the company you keep,” and Donald Trump has kept company with — to use his words — some “bad hombres,” and John Casablancas was one of the worst. At age thirteen, I joined John Casablancas/Elite (“JCE”) in a small-ish market and started modeling bathing suits and lingerie.
Casablancas died, tragically, free in Brazil in 2013 at age 70.
2) Jean-Luc Brunel ran MC2 Model Management, “with financing by Jeffrey Epstein.” He was arrested in 2020 for sex trafficking crimes including funneling girls across the ocean to Epstein:
In 2015, Virginia Giuffre, an American campaigner for justice for victims of sex trafficking who founded the NGO Victims Refuse Silence, accused Brunel of supplying girls to Epstein, claiming the latter had bragged to her that he had slept with more than 1,000 “of Brunel’s girls”.
. . .
The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed that that Brunel was detained on 16 December as part of an investigation into “rapes, sexual assaults, the rape and sexual assault of a minor aged 15, the rape and sexual assault of a minor over 15 years, sexual harassment, association with criminals and the trafficking and exploitation of minors”.
He has also surfaced in the recently released batch of emails, some in connection with Trump (one of them was even featured on The Daily Show this Monday).
On Feb 19, 2022 the BBC reported Brunel was found hanging dead in his cell, an apparent suicide.
3) We know all about Jeffrey Epstein. He was also found hanging dead in his jail cell, a few years earlier on August 10, 2019, an apparent suicide.
Just one other thing, let us not forget that in the latest email dump Epstein writes,
I have met some very bad people ,, none as bad as trump. not one decent cell in his body
4) Paolo Zampolli founded ID Modeling Management in the mid 1990’s. As you might recall from the introductory link, he “cornered the visa angle, using U.S. immigration loopholes to bring in young foreign models — often from Eastern Europe and South America — under false pretenses”.
A former Kossack, SwedishJewFish (”Rebecca”) wrote the following in 2016:
You know what is interesting? The whole narrative that Bill [Clinton] was somehow complicit can be traced, directly, to an extortion scheme perpetrated by none other than Paolo Zampolli-the “modeling agent” (coughpimpcough) who worked with and then for Trump and introduced him to Melania.
Based on early statements from Melania, Zampolli appears to have been the one to have introduced her to Donald. But guess what he is doing now? He works in the State Department as the “US Special Representative for Global Partnerships”! He flies around the world doing shady stuff on behalf of “the country.” And surprise surprise, he also seems to be the one whose idea it was to turn Gaza into some glitzy resort (because you know, Gaza is OUR country—!):
Way back when I first met Zampolli, in 2016, to hear his thoughts about the Trump campaign, he told me about his idea to convert Gaza into a Mediterranean Riviera with high-rises and shopping malls. Or as he explains it now, “Let’s make it like Dubai, but with no golden faucets.”
5) And then there’s Trump.
In 1999, Donald Trump launched Trump Model Management. His agency followed the exact same pattern: bring girls in on tourist or “extraordinary talent” visas, overcrowd them in overpriced apartments, charge them for every service, and send them to work illegally while racking up debt they could never repay. Former models from his agency say they were instructed to lie to customs and start working immediately upon arrival.
This wasn’t theory. It was documented. The visas were real. The labor was real. THE FRAUD WAS REAL.
From Glamour, 2016:
None of the former Trump models had anything positive to say about their time at the agency.
Said Blais of one event, for which she was hired by another Trump endeavor—Trump Vodka—to serve as “eye candy,” “I knew that I was a model and there was objectification in the job, but this was another level.”
“Honestly, they are the most crooked agency I’ve ever worked for,” she said, summing up her experience. “And I’ve worked for quite a few.”
SwedishJewFish, wrote an article for the Daily Beast which is behind a paywall but which she quoted extensively in this diary:
Furthermore,
The attraction for the men “was young girls assuming they’d get somewhere” by joining the party, the photographer says, “Of course, it never happens.”
[…]
The girls were as young as 15, he says, and “over their heads, they had no idea, and they ended up in situations. There were always dramas because the men threw money and drugs at them to keep them enticed. It’s based on power and dominating girls who can’t push back and can be discarded. There’s always someone to pick them back up. Nobody wants to call home and say ‘Help me.’”
Trump would “go from room to room,” said the photographer, who added that “I was there to party myself. It was guys with younger girls, sex, a lot of sex, a lot of cocaine, top-shelf liquor” but no smoking. Trump didn’t approve of cigarettes.
So to recap: of these five men, three are dead, one works for the State Department, and one is the President of the United States.
Will we see the full content of the “Epstein Files”? I don’t know, and perhaps we’ll never know. But this is the world Trump has been a part of his entire life. Nothing would surprise me anymore.