With the exception of Tiffany Trump – who we’re guessing was shipped off to begin life anew in a Moscow slum, a la Martha on The Americans – just about every member of the president’s extended family has spent the past two years under intense scrutiny.
Vanessa Trump has been of particular interest to the press in recent weeks, thanks to her increasingly contentious divorce from Donald Trump Jr.
Several Washington insiders have publicly praised the mother of five for reading the writing on the wall and jumping ship before the entire administration capsizes.
So what is it that makes this 40-year-old former model and child of privilege so much savvier than all the other Trump hangers-on?
Well, according to a new report from Page Six, Vanessa is no stranger to criminal enterprises.
An ex-con and former inmate of the Latin Kings street gang named Valentin Rivera has come forward to tell the tale of his five-year romance with Don Jr.’s bride.
He says the two of them met in grade school and reconnected while she was attending a $ 47,000-a-year prep school in Manhattan.
“She was fascinated. We were kids. She liked the street life at the time,” Rivera told Page Six.
Yes, it was a regular reverse-West Side Story, and Valentin had just met a girl named Vanessa.
Unfortunately, their relationship faced a major stumbling block when he was imprisoned for assault, first doing time at Rikers Island, then at a prison upstate.
“She was heartbroken that I was being taken away,” he said.
“The first time [she came to visit], she was upset — she cried a little bit — but after a while, we get used to things. She only came to visit me twice because her mother forbid her from coming to visit me.”
“I came home from juvie, then I met her again,
According to Rivera, he and Vanessa were more than just lovers – they were business partners.
Together, they would drive around in cars owned by her father – high-powered attorney Charles Haydon – delivering weed with a trunk full of unregistered weapons.
“If we got pulled over, the police would just let us go,” he said.
“She’ll give up Charles’s information. Car’s registered to Charles Haydon. They’ll just cut us loose.”
Unfortunately, this whirlwind romance came to an abrupt end when Rivera picked up a copy of the New York Post and read that Vanessa – now a 20-year-old model – was hooking up with Leonardo DiCaprio.
“She got into a couple of little catfights,” Rivera told us. “She was pretty jealous,” he said, “as far as other girls and stuff, she let it be known that I was her man.”
This is apparently a tendency that stuck with Vanessa into adulthood.
As Page Six points out, singer Aubrey O’Day says that when she was caught cheating with Don Jr., Vanessa “went a little gangster” on her.
“DiCaprio’s luscious love is 20-year-old fashion model Vanessa Haydon. The passionate pair have been inseparable over the past two weeks,” reads the article from May 1, 1998.
“I don’t think it’s a fling,” a source told the paper.
The important takeaway from all of this is that Vanessa Trump used to drive around delivering drugs and illegal guns for fun, but even she drew the line at whatever Don Jr.’s messed up in.
That seems like the kind of evidence Robert Mueller could present to a grand jury and just be like, “C’mon. Gimme the indictment.”