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According to records released by the FBI and published by Bloomberg on Monday, the FBI spent two years investigating former US President Donald Trump’s first wife, Ivana Trump, over alleged ties to questionable elements in her native Czechoslovakia.
According to a cover letter accompanying the documents, the FBI released 176 pages of Trump’s file after reviewing 365 pages. The agency reportedly told Bloomberg that it had discovered nearly 900 pages of “potentially responsive documents,” warning that it could take up to five years to deliver them all, but promising to release the rest next month after Bloomberg sued.
Based on information from a confidential source, a heavily redacted document from February 1989 stamped “secret” and later declassified recommends the opening of a preliminary investigation into Trump, born Ivana Zelnickova and previously known as Ivana Winklmayr.
However, another “secret” document admits that the “allegations” leveled against her may have stemmed from “jealousy of her wealth and fame.”
According to the file, Trump is a former Olympic skier who met Trump in 1975 “on a ski trip” and married him two years later. A later revision claims the couple met “at the Montreal Summer Olympics” in 1976, while a third version describes her as a “alternate for the Czech Olympic ski team” who moved to Montreal to model before marrying the real estate mogul.
After graduating from university in Prague, she moved to Vienna to work as a model, married an Austrian whose name is redacted (presumably Winklmayr), obtained Austrian citizenship, and then moved to Montreal. According to “conflicting information,” she was either a model or a ski instructor who visited the US frequently before obtaining permanent residency in 1978, a year after marrying Trump.
The documents delve into the circumstances surrounding her relocations from communist Czechoslovakia to Austria and then to Canada, as well as her marriages, employment, travel, and associations with redacted entities. According to a rare unredacted document, Trump received an autographed book from Czechoslovakian President Vaclav Havel during a visit to the country in 1990 and would likely visit again that year, according to a “highly confidential and reliable source.”
However, by the end of 1990, “no outstanding leads remained,” and the investigation was closed.
Ivana Trump died last year at the age of 73 from a fall in her home, effectively ending the confidentiality rights that had protected her file while she was alive.
