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Michael Wolf speaks to hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of people a week through his Substack and also the podcast he does with the Daily Beast called Inside Trump's Head, where he brings the audience inside Trump's head.
Exploring Michael Wolff's complex relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and its impact on his Trump reporting, revealing ethical controversies.
Key Takeaways
- Wolff’s relationship with Epstein was unusually close and ethically questionable.
- His goal was to expose Trump’s ties to Epstein, believing Trump unfit for office.
- The media missed the full story due to incomplete information and premature coverage.
- Wolff’s journalistic style prioritizes access and narrative over traditional ethics and facts.
- This case highlights tensions between investigative goals and journalistic standards.
Summary
- Michael Wolff, known for his books on Donald Trump, had extensive email exchanges with Jeffrey Epstein.
- Over 5,000 emails reveal coordination of meetings and personal interactions, including gift exchanges.
- Wolff advised Epstein on handling media questions about Trump during the 2015 presidential campaign.
- The media initially covered Wolff-Epstein emails poorly and without full context.
- Wolff claims his relationship with Epstein was to expose Trump's unfitness for presidency.
- Wolff defends his controversial journalistic methods as necessary to reveal the Trump-Epstein connection.
- Wolff has a history of flouting journalistic ethics, including off-the-record violations and using his son for spying.
- Critics describe Wolff as arrogant and more focused on vibe than factual detail.
- The video argues the full scope of Wolff’s relationship with Epstein has never been fully reported.
- Wolff’s approach raises questions about journalistic integrity and the limits of ethical reporting.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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Wolf was able to do this because he has written four books about Donald Trump, including books about the early days of the Trump White House. He has spoken to hundreds of Trump's close confidants and friends, and spent a good deal of time
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with Trump himself. And one of the primary sources that Michael Wolf relied on in coming to an understanding about who Donald Trump is, in fact, one of the most insightful people he says about Donald Trump is Jeffrey Epstein. And so this, to hear
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Wolf tell it, would explain why there are thousands of emails between Michael Wolf and Jeffrey Epstein that have come out as part of the Epstein files. Except the truth is actually much stranger and much more complicated than
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that. The media covered this story a bit when some of the emails between Michael Wolf and Epstein first emerged, but, and not to be this person, but they covered it badly in my opinion, which is actually not their fault. It seems to be
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the case that all of the media uproar and outrage about Wolf's relationship with Epstein actually came before we had the full scope of their relationship, before we had all of the files that show the full scope of this
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relationship. And then by the time we got the full files, the press had moved on. They felt like the story had already been told. So, we never, we never got the full story. So that's what we're doing today. This is the full story for
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all of the files we have now of this pseudojournalist and the convicted sex offender that he befriended in order to get dirt on other people. But perhaps it actually wasn't just about that at all.
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Let's dive into it. Wolf and Epstein emailed a lot. Over 5,000 emails exist between the two, and they were often emailing about coordinating phone calls and meetups in person in Paris, New York, or wherever they both happened to
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be at any given point in time. They talk about taking swims and going for runs.
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And in fact, Epstein at one point even gave Michael Wolf a gift, a pair of sneakers that Wolf had apparently admired at one point when the two were hanging out. And this is already incredibly unorthodox. A reporter, a
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traditional journalist, which Wolf takes pains to say he is not, which we will talk about, should not be accepting gifts from a source. It's compromising to traditionally good journalism. Now, the journalism profession in general was fairly aghast to see the emails between Wolf and Epstein when they first emerged. And we've known each other 25 years, and I was shocked by some of these emails.
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And there was one email exchange in particular that really got people's hackles up. Really got the press corps' hackles up. And I want to read one in particular that I was like, "Wow." You send an email to him saying, "I hear CNN
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is planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you, either on air or in scrum afterwards." He writes back, "If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it would be?" And then you say, "I think you should let
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him hang himself. If he says he hasn't been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you valuable PR and political currency." Joanna goes on to give more commentary on this particular email.
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What I want to say is in this particular email, it sounds like you're advising a convict, a convicted pedophile, about what to do and you're colluding with him against a potential... Well, you know, I don't know.
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It sounds like you are advising a convict, a convicted pedophile, about what to do. Oh, Joanna, it is so much more than that. But on the surface, yes, that's what this is. And this email, uh, this is the email that was seized upon
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over and over again by the press from The Guardian to The Wall Street Journal to The Atlantic, over and over again. That line, "let him hang himself,"
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and the email overall where Wolf is advising Epstein on how to handle a situation vis-à-vis Trump during Trump's presidential campaign. The first one is the one that is the one that folks focus on. But the problem is this: knowing now
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everything we know, that is actually not the part that matters at all. This is not the part that bothers me. And a reason for that can be found in Wolf's very own defense of himself.
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You know, one of the things that I was focused on is trying to get Epstein to come forward. Let me help you go public in telling your story about Donald Trump. I mean, I saw then, as I
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have continued to see and see every day now, that Donald Trump was unfit to be the president of the United States.
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Right. So, this is 2015. Yeah. I'm the person who sees this elemental story. Donald Trump and, and I've gone through this with Epstein deep into the background. Donald Trump is the best friend of, right? You know, evil. Um, I mean, he is
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the best friend of a deeply, deeply diabolical person. This is what I would call the bigger fish to fry defense, and I actually think it's valid. Michael Wolf's fundamental point is better to work behind the scenes with the pedophile so as to keep
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the in front of the scenes pedophile out of the White House. And he argues that there's basically no length he wouldn't go to in order to do that because, a, he believes in general that there's almost nothing you shouldn't do
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in order to get a story. But particularly this story, as he says he is, he is the only person generally to hear him tell it. That's how he describes it.
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Who saw this elemental, fundamental story of the relationship between Donald Trump and a man he describes as evil, which is interesting. And as for the journalists that would critique his methods, well, he says they have not written the
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books, the kinds of books that he has written. They have not gotten the kind of access that he has gotten. And again, he's correct. There's just one massive problem.
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But to fully understand the problem, we need to go back in time, back into the Michael Wolf archives.
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This is with John Friedman. Our guest is Michael Wolf, the founder of Newser.com on the web. Also the author of the forthcoming book, The Man Who Wants the News on Ripper Rodox. The book is the story of Rodox's rise to be one
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of the great media moguls of our day. Michael, welcome. Hey, Dr. Aside, how did that man get that job? He does not seem particularly intelligent. You know what I mean? Uh, anyway, Michael Wolf was and has always been interested
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in power. He has also always been controversial. To put it nicely, to put it meanly, one might say he was one of the most hated figures in New York media, which is how The New Republic described him in a profile of him in
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2004. Now, the primary criticisms of Wolf even back then were that he was arrogant. I believe one of the quotes is, "If Wolf were any further up his own ass, he'd be a colonoscopy." Hilarious burn. Uh, that Wolf flouted all of the
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rules of journalism. Again, he would put things on the record that were explicitly said to be off the record. A huge violation of journalistic ethics.
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Apparently, he once, in order to garner information on somebody he was looking to write about, had his son basically do some spying on the individual while at a playdate at the person's house. They were all part of the same Upper East
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Side circles. That having your child do the dirty work of your journalistic job is morally dubious, to say the least. But there's also the accusation that he didn't really care about the details. Michael Wolf had a weekly column in New York
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Magazine in the late 90s and early 2000s that was wildly popular in elite Manhattan circles, but which was criticized for being light on specific facts and high on vibe, high on Michael Wolf's directional sense of the truth as opposed to the nitty-gritty
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reality which the best journalists strive to get. And perhaps most frustrating.
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reality which the best journalists strive to get. And perhaps most frustrating of all to his journalistic peers, it worked. Michael Wolf and his column were to some degree a phenomenon within the very particular and elite circles that he ran in. Now, it's worth
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pausing for a moment to ask yourself if this sounds like anybody in particular. an arrogant, a bit bombastic man born in the 1950s in the tri-state area who is high on his own gut feeling and directional truths, low on specific
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facts at times and obsessed with the powerful and elite of Manhattan. It's Trump. It's Trump. I mean, Michael Wolf and Trump are certainly different people. Trump is a different character to just about everyone in the world. And I think Michael Wolf would would see
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there as to be no higher insult than be to be compared to Trump. But it's true that these two share a fair bit of biographical and perhaps even some personality traits in common. Traits they also share with as it turns out
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Epstein as well. And again this insight so to speak that I am giving you is not new. In this same 2004 profile of Wolf, the author uh writes poetically, "The things about Wolf that his colleagues seem to hate the most, ambition, his
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social climbing, his worship of status and buzz and money, his self-referentiality and soypism are seen by some as the perfect reflection of the world he covers and thus the key to his success. As New York journalists are the
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first to acknowledge, Wolf is the quintessential New York creation. Fixated on culture, style, buzz, and money, money, money. And in this way, there has always been a question that has dogged Michael Wolf's career. Is he a case of those who cannot do teach? To
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what extent has and did and does Michael Wolf wish he could be Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch and Jeffrey Epstein? He did in fact raise a bunch of money for a dot startup that went bust which he chronicled in his book called Burn Rate.
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And he founded the news aggregating website Newser. And then there's this. In 2003, Michael Wolf coralled a group of very wealthy men to make a bid to buy New York magazine, the magazine for which he had written a weekly column for
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years. And the group of investors that he brought together for this purpose included Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein.
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This is in 2003. This is a group of four men and two of the four men were Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein. Michael Wolf nowadays likes to play I don't know if it's a faux humility game or just an
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effort at a little charm, but it's this bit where he goes like I don't know why all these old pedophiles love hanging out with me. I think he he jokingly called himself as said, you know, he doesn't want his his beat to be known as
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the the elderly sex abuser beat while acknowledging that that's sort of what it's become. But again, part of all of this is like, why do they keep talking to me? But as I've dug into Wolf and his history, it's pretty [ __ ] obvious why
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Wolf is in many ways one of these [ __ ] Not very critically and importantly in the sexual abuse sense.
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There's no evidence or record that he has ever abused or or anybody, but in certain key major regards.
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And this brings us to what I think actually matters. What I have been tearing my hair out at tearing tearing my hair out about watching the the old coverage, months old coverage of Michael Wolf and Jeffrey Epstein. Wolf did not
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start advising Epstein or start giving him PR crisis management strategies in 2015 when Donald Trump announced his run for president. The the bigger fish to fry argument that Wolf has gotten away with making over and over again because
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it is the only thing that people have focused on or called him on is [ __ ] Michael Wolf spent nearly 10 years, many of which were long before Trump announced his run for president, offering Epstein not just advice, but a
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full-blown plan that Michael Wolf was going to be paid to implement to rehabilitate Jeffrey Epstein's online image, his image in the press, and broader image in the public imagination.
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So, let's uh let's go through this. The first bit of correspondence that we have between Epstein and Wolf is in 2009.
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This is six months after Epstein has been released from jail. And they have clearly just had a phone conversation.
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Wol is following up over email saying, "Thanks for calling. Eager to see you soon." And so already the feeling I have is that we have been plopped into the middle of an existing relationship.
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These two have not just met, which of course we know they didn't just meet because they nearly went into business together in 2003. But in 2011 is where things really start heating up. Have been defending you to the world's press.
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My pleasure, of course, Wolf writes to Epstein. And then in mid 2011, Michael Wolf partners with fellow Epstein friend Ian Osborne to put together an 18 to 24month plan, detailed plan that would, in Wolf's own words, allow you, he
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writes this to Epstein, so you as Epstein, allow you to be as public as you want to be. and I believe enable you to be who you want to be without any meaningful blowback. And this was no mere ingratiation garner goodwill plot.
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Michael Wolf was planning on being an active part of implementing a technology strategy that he was going to be paid for. Ian's approach, Wolf writes to Epstein in a different email, is fairly simple. It's his fees. I'll work out my
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arrangement with him and then we'll separately get bids on the outside costs, primarily technology costs associated with the web buildout and the search engine cleanup. And they are about to go through with this. Again, this is a specific mapped out plan to
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scrub the internet clean or try to scrub the internet clean of, as they specifically lay out, any mention of Epstein's conviction in 2008 in Florida, any mention of him as a pedophile, any mention of him with underage girls, all
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of the most damning things about Epstein. Joanna Kohl's is scandalized that he offered Epstein some PR advice, you know, while he was trying to prevent Trump from being elected. I mean, this man years prior was out here trying to
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get Epstein's crimes erased from the public record while Trump was just a private citizen. And again, they are about to go through with this until Epstein puts a stop to it. In his follow-up email, Epstein says, "Do not
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begin any work until everything is reviewed." And in all of the emails I read, it seems that Epstein never revives this project. So it just essentially dies because Epstein is hesitant for seems a variety of reasons.
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But this is just the beginning because between 2011 and 2015, 2015 being the year that Trump announced his run for president, Wolf and Epstein email every month but four four five. So this is 44 43 44 out of 48 months they are emailing
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each other often coordinating phone calls or meetups and repeatedly often Wolf is trying to take active steps to help Epstein not passive advice giving active steps I'd like to help you on your public profile issues Wolf writes so tell me how you'd like to think about
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it he offers some ideas and he says I am at your disposal and in particular unsurprisingly Wolf sees an opportunity to use, as he describes it, his deaf hand, his his deaf way with words to write a flattering piece about Epstein.
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He describes this in many different ways in in many different emails. He says, "Here's what I'm thinking about. The goal is to shift the story to reintroduce you." He's writing this in 2013. So, we get to address and diffuse
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all the issues that might otherwise be the subject of an expose without making them the point. Also, if I do it, other people will tend not to do it because the story has been claimed and I'm a prominent enough voice that mostly other
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writers wouldn't want to follow me. For me, it would be easy to do this and enjoyable. And for you, this is a particularly advantageous approach, i.e.
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a well-positioned friend with, if I do say so, a particularly deaf touch and platform to write about anything he wants to write about. Thoughts? Now, there are two options here. Michael Wolf has always known that Epstein was as he
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now describes him evil. Deeply diabolical, diabolical person, I think Wolf said, in which case Wolf in service of his own insatiable ambition, his own like craven need to cultivate this source for, by the way, in 2011 unspecified stories. this was not the
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Trump story at this point was willing to put women and girls in harm's way by scrubbing the evidence or trying to scrub the evidence of who this man was from the internet allowing him to live a more normal life which would if you have
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half a brain you realize mean allowing him more access to women and girls or the second option is that Wolf bought Epstein's [ __ ] Wolf bought Epste's [ __ ] Wolf Like a bunch of other old men that Wolf writes about as being in
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Epstein's orbit. Steve Bannon, Ahud Barack, his attorneys shared the sense that Epstein had gotten a bit of a raw deal in the public imagination. That really all Epste was guilty of was some prostitution, soliciting of prostitution gone wrong. And yeah, he had some weird
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sexual predilictions. He he needed too many prostitutes. But should a man really be vilified, kept from living any sort of normal life for that? And this isn't me this isn't me putting words into Wolf's mouth. These are the words that Wolf put
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in the mouths of others in an essay he wrote about Epstein for a book he published in 2021. Everything I just said is a paraphrased version of exactly what Wolf says Epstein's close friends think happened. All he was was
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somebody who liked prostitutes and it turned out some of those girls ended up being underage. That's it. And Wolf would likely say at this point that this was him outing outing these men for defending Epstein.
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Except Wolf doesn't counter any of that. Wolf doesn't point out that these girls weren't prostitutes. They were local high school students that were desperate and vulnerable. That Epstein was luring with promises of a couple hundred bucks to give a massage. And then once they
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were in the room, suddenly there was expectation of a lot more. So what Wol actually does is not out people we already know supported Epstein, but is sneak into the public record, the defenses that his closest friends give
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of him. And I would be less confident that that's what Wolf is doing if I hadn't now read a whole bunch of emails where Wolf tells Epstein that's what he's uniquely deafly capable of doing because for all of the access that Wolf
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brags about having gotten. I was the only journalist not in his employee who has ever spent an enorm an enormous amount of time with him. all of the access in order to get the story.
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The story Wolf tells is of Epstein, the interesting enigmatic controversial figure who the world's elite nevertheless show up to court day after day in an unpublished profile of Epstein that Wolf did in fact end up writing that is separate, independent from the
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the essay he wrote about Epste that ended up in his book. Wolf on two different occasions mentions the poised women, the poised young women that hang around Epstein. They mingle freely with his powerful guests, he says, not so
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much as hostesses or in tabloid language, herumlike sex slaves, but as attentive students, which of course might be regarded as having its own fetish-like attraction. Epstein explicitly denies that there is a sexual quidd proquo.
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Interesting. Wol was interested in getting Epstein's perspective on whether or not there was a sexual quidd proquo.
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But for all of the access, all the unique access Wolf likes to say he was able to get, there is no indication that he ever once asked one of the girls, one of the poised women mingling with his
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powerful guests were never asked how they felt about the situation. Wol has said that he found Epstein and Steve Bannon to be the most useful sources, the people who were I don't know exactly how he phrase it, but like most
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articulate in understanding Donald Trump. I have always found probably the two people who have been most insightful about Donald Trump are Jeffrey Epstein and Steve Bannon.
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But all that really means is that they offered a perspective that felt the most true to Wolf. A 14-year-old pageant contestant who encounters Donald Trump is going to have a very different perspective on who he is. a perspective
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in fact that Jeffrey Epstein could never have. And it doesn't mean that Epstein's perspective on Trump as one of his peers isn't incredibly valuable and needed, but it's to say it is not the only perspective, but it is the one that
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comports the most with Wolf's understanding of the world because Wol is fundamentally a peer to these men in their 70s who grew up in a very different era. And if he is going to talk to hundreds of thousands and
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millions of people every week, which I am by and large fine with, it is also really valuable to understand this piece.
Topics:Michael WolffJeffrey EpsteinDonald Trumpjournalism ethicsInside Trump's Headmedia controversyTrump White HouseEpstein filesjournalistic integrityinvestigative reporting
