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Melania’s Sister Ines Sparks Questions After She Wasn’t Seen at Mother’s Funeral — And Hasn’t Been Seen in Nearly Two Decades

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Melania Trump has never been much of a public figure. Even when she was the First Lady, we knew so little about her, her life, and her family. Being First Lady is about as big a public figure one can be, but Melania kept herself hidden and her mouth closed. All we really ever knew was that she was a model who married Donald Trump after dating him for five years. She seems to live a very lonely life, especially now that her beloved mother Amalija Knavs has passed. But she does have one person she can always count on—her sister, Ines Knauss.

I know, who? Melania has a sister? It’s surprising since we’ve never seen her or heard from her, and Melania has rarely mentioned her. Melania did mention her a few times with regard to the passing of their mother, and in her speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016, Melania said Knauss was “an incredible woman and a friend.”

So what do we know about the mysterious Ines Knauss? Well, Knauss is a two years older than Melania and lived near the Trumps on Park Avenue when they lived in NYC, prior to living in the White House (shudder) and now Mar-a-Lago.

In 2018, the New York Post referred to Knauss as “the older sister nobody knows” and Town & Country called her the “secret sister.”

What seems most odd is that there was no sighting of Ines at the funeral for her mother last week. She wasn’t with the family to receive the coffin, nor was she seen in any photos.

Donald Trump, center right, stands with his wife Melania, second left, their son Barron, center left, and father-in-law Viktor Knavs, as the coffin carrying the remains of Amalija Knavs, the former first lady’s mother, is carried into the Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea for her funeral, Thursday, Jan. 18, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. Ines Knauss was not present. Photo – GIORGIO VIERA/AFP VIA GETTY

When Amalija Knavs’ coffin was carried from the church back to the limo to probable internment, once again Ines Knauss was not present.

Donald Trump (C) stands with his wife Melania Trump (R) and father-in-law Viktor Knavs (L), as they depart a funeral for Amalija Knavs, the former first lady´s mother, outside the Church of Bethesda by the Sea, in Palm Beach, Florida, on January 18, 2024. Once again, Ines Knauss was not present. Photo – AFP

According to the Express, Ines Knauss obtained her citizenship in 2018, around the same time Melania’s parents obtained their citizenship.

The lawyer for Melania’s parents acknowledged that the Knavs’ had obtained citizenship via the very pathway that their son-in-law, the president, has so publicly denounced. Wildes called chain migration a “dirtier” way of characterizing “a bedrock of our immigration process when it comes to family reunification,” according to The New York Times.

And for the record, Melania was born Melania Knavs. Her parents kept that spelling. When Melania and Ines moved to Europe to model, they changed the spelling of their last name to Knauss in an attempt to Anglicanize their name and perhaps make it easier for people to pronounce.

In chain migration, parents of U.S. citizens are given priority. But siblings are much lower down on the priority scale. Yet Ines received citizenship, despite this fact, and despite the fact that she doesn’t hold a job. The Trump administration had been against immigration when the immigrant could potentially become a “public charge,” and yet, Ines seemed to have no problem whatsoever gaining the coveted American citizenship.

Of course there are many questions about how Melania received her visa when she originally moved to the US, as she obtained the “Einstein” visa for “extraordinary ability.”

It’s reported that Ines Knauss is an “artist”. Melania Trump has previously shared her sister’s pencil-based sketches on Twitter. But searching for Ines’s art on Google brings up nothing, which leads me to believe she is not an actual working artist. So how did she get U.S. citizenship?

While we can’t expect everyone in Donald Trump’s orbit to be an enthusiastic Twitter user, it’s hard to stress just how little is known for sure about Knauss. In fact, the same half dozen or so facts about her are written into almost relevant every article.

Ines does have an open Instagram account, as well as an X/Twitter account, but it appears she only posts photos of Melania and Barron from gossip magazines.

Recent posts on X/Twitter are very basic and give us no clue to who Ines is as a person:

It seems Ines would fly back to Slovenia to visit, as evidenced in this video, reportedly taken by her late mother as they landed in Slovenia in 2023:

On Instagram, there is this one photo of Melania taken in Paris when she was younger, but it doesn’t really look like her?

Ines would also post the occasion self-portrait, and she is also a very beautiful woman, like her sister:

The New York Post confirmed via property records in 2017 that Knauss lived in a Trump Organization-owned Penthouse near Melania Trump. Town & Country reported that it’s the same building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that daughter Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner lived in prior to their move to Washington, D.C. and eventually Florida. It’s unclear if Knauss still lives there now that Melania Trump has relocated to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. Melania and Ines’ parents usually lived wherever Melania was, as they were instrumental in raising Melania’s son Barron.

What is really impressive is that for all the professional photos of Melania Trump in photo services like Getty or the Associated Press, there seems to only be one of Knauss from 2005, seen here in Town & Country. In it, she’s pictured with her sister as well as Palm Beach philanthropist Audrey Gruss. “They are very close,” Gruss told the New York Post when they met at a fundraising event at Mar-a-Lago resort. “She struck me as a lovely person, and extremely creative.”

Ines Knauss, Melania Trump, and Audrey Gruss attend the Valentino Fashion Luncheon benefitting Boy’s Club of New York at Mar-a-Lago February 4, 2005 in Palm Beach Florida. The siblings’ mother, Amalija Knavs, died on January 9 and her funeral is taking place on January 18 in Florida at a church near Mar-a-Lago.
LUCIEN CAPEHART PHOTOGRAPHY, INC/GETTY IMAGES

Speaking of Mar-a-Lago, CNN reports that Knauss served as Melania Trump’s maid of honor when she wed Donald Trump at the resort in 2005. But there are no public photos of her at the wedding. In addition, there were no photos or sightings of Ines at the funeral for her mother last week.

As Town & Country reported, the sisters were born with the last name Knavs and grew up together in Slovenia. They moved to Milan, Italy together in the early 1990s, where Ines wanted to break into fashion design while Melania was beginning to model – the career path that would lead her to meet her future husband.

“She really wanted to be in fashion but didn’t know how to break in,” Paris-based photographer Ale de Basseville told the New York Post. “Ines wasn’t like the other girls you would meet there, who behave like queens. She was really polite and very mellow.”

It’s a rare accomplishment to be in the Trump orbit and have so little publicity surrounding you, but Knauss has managed to retain a relatively large amount of privacy. In fact, it’s almost bizarre how little footprint there is for Ines. A basic search brings up just a few photos, and they are very old. In fact, no one has seen a photo of Ines that is less than 20 years old.

Ines did make the news back in 2018, when Page Six claimed that “once or twice a month, the first lady quietly comes to New York, and has her sister come over to give advice as she tries on outfits.”

But according to W Magazine, that was not the case. Melania’s spokeswoman responded to Page Six and said, “Mrs. Trump and her sister are very close, but she is not who helps her with styling her wardrobe,” the spokeswoman said. “At the end of the day, it is Mrs. Trump who decides what she will wear.”

Weird? And yet, still no photos. You would think Ines would’ve been at her mother’s funeral, walking with her sister, father and Barron as they accompanied their mother’s casket into the church, and back out again. But she was no where to be seen, and hasn’t been since around 2006.

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