The Photographer Who Helped Launch Melania Trump’s Modeling Profession Is a Recurring Character within the Epstein Recordsdata

According to The Washington Post, Melania finally obtained an EB-1 “Einstein visa,” reserved for people with extraordinary potential. Verglas photographed her once more in 2011 for Haute Living.

“I loved her beauty, stature, and elegance,” Verglas told WWD of the primary woman in September 2024. “She was pretty reserved. She was not an extroverted person. We were never close, but we worked together a dozen times. She was always very professional and nice to the staff and the people on the team around us.”

During the 2016 election, Verglas despatched a cease-and-desist letter to a PAC for utilizing his racy GQ images of Melania in an advert marketing campaign, telling Page Six, “When I work with people, there is a trust. So I just wanted to assure her I was in shock.”

The writer of Melania’s memoir, Skyhorse, contacted Verglas in 2024 to request the images he captured of her throughout the British GQ shoot, Sports Illustrated, and others for the guide.

“I’m glad these images are resurfacing like this, and I’m happy that she’s embracing them, and that her and her husband like them, and it makes me happy that I did not do such a bad job in the end,” Verglas instructed Vanity Fair of the GQ unfold. “I see that she’s celebrating her beauty and her body, those images and others.”

Melania declined to remark.

Throughout the years, Epstein continued to take care of the connection with Verglas. In 2017, he wrote Verglas, “Woody Allen is looking for a beautiful 20-24 girl to play a college girl in a comedy. Thoughts?”

In 2015 an unknown sender forwarded Epstein an article shared by Verglas about scopolamine—a robust drug derived from trumpet vegetation reported to trigger reminiscence loss and excessive suggestibility. The e mail topic was of a Daily Mail article titled “Scopolamine: Powerful drug growing in the forests of Colombia that ELIMINATES free will.”

Epstein, based on two separate emails, appeared to have been rising the poisonous Trumpet plant, which the drug is derived from, in his nursery. The plant can be known as Brugmansia or “Angel’s Trumpet” for its vibrant bell form and is usually present in gardens.

“Ask chris about my trumpet plants at nursery?” Epstein wrote in a 2014 email to Ann Rodriguez, who seems to have been the overall supervisor of his personal island, Little St. James, based on Miami New Times. He additionally talked about “Trumpet flowers” in a 2013 email to Rodriguez, alongside different landscaping gadgets like pool timber, blocking timber, and new palms.

Scopolamine is used medically to deal with movement illness, administered in managed doses to dam sure receptors within the nervous system. In illicit contexts, it has been linked to trafficking networks and infrequently evades routine toxicology screens.

“Although I don’t remember the context surrounding this email, which was sent more than 10 years ago to many people, including members of my family,” Verglas mentioned in an announcement to VF, “I do know that at the time it was a subject of great concern and that everyone was talking about it with horror. How could I have imagined that Mr. Epstein was secretly cultivating them, as I recently discovered in the files made public by the US government?”