Author Michael Wolff advised Jeffrey Epstein to let Donald Trump “hang himself” amid looming questions about their decade-long relationship, newly released emails show.
Epstein and Trump had a cozy decade-long friendship, but the outspoken politician did not want to discuss that bond during interviews, Wolff has previously said.
The author of four books on Trump’s rise to the White House revealed last November that Epstein — a convicted sex offender who died by suicide while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019 — told him he had been Trump’s “closest friend for 10 years” before a falling out in 2004 over a bidding war for a Palm Beach residence.
Wolff, who conducted nearly 100 hours of interviews with Epstein prior to his death, detailed in July how the disgraced financier’s ties to Trump appeared unlikely to go away despite the Department of Justice and FBI previously announcing that no additional files related to the investigation into his alleged crimes would be released.
“Remember, Trump is very capable of living in this reality bubble of his own,” Wolff told the Yale Review in July. “And I’m sure that — whatever happened between him and Epstein, does he feel guilty about it? Does he feel like he was doing something he shouldn’t have been doing? No. I think his attitude is, ‘That was living. That’s what we did.’”
Wolff, who could not be reached for comment early Wednesday, also detailed visiting Trump at Mar-a-Lago while writing Landslide, his book about the 2020 election and the aftermath of President Biden’s victory.
“We sat in the Mar-a-Lago lobby and talked forever,” the author recalled. “Well, he talked. But beforehand, his aides asked me what the rough topics were that I wanted to talk about. And I gave them half a dozen topics, among them Epstein. And they said that everything else was fine — January 6, whatever, whatever. But they said, very specifically, that if I brought Epstein up, he would cut short the interview. They didn’t say not to bring him up, but they recommended I not do that, because he would cut it short.”
The relationship between Trump and Epstein is in renewed focus on Wednesday following the release of emails by House Democrats indicating the disgraced financier wrote that Trump had “spent hours at my house” with one of Epstein’s victims.
Wolff noted how Trump’s “lame-duck years” have begun, signaling a shift among his base as they look ahead to his possible successor, including Vice President JD Vance. He predicted in July that the so-called Epstein files would never be released despite increased political pressure for Trump to make good on his 2024 campaign promise.
“I would say so,” Wolff replied when asked if he was convinced the Epstein files would never be released. “They’ll make offerings on this, as they have with their request to have the grand-jury transcripts released (which could not matter less), but never the full open kimono.”
Who Is Michael Wolff?
Wolff, an author and journalist, has written seven books, including four about Trump’s rise in American politics. In 2018, he released “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” a bestseller that detailed a disorganized, tumultuous administration and criticism of former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.
What Michael Wolff told Epstein via Email
The three emails released Wednesday stem from Epstein’s 2008 plea deal in Florida on state charges of soliciting prostitution. Federal prosecutors declined to pursue charges in the investigation. Two of the three email exchanges were addressed to Wolff, while a third was sent to Epstein’s longtime confidante and co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell.
“Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop,” Epstein wrote to Wolff in January 2019.
Epstein also mentioned the name of a sex trafficking victim, as well as Mar-a-Lago, but denied that he had been asked by Trump to resign from the club.
“Never a member ever,” Epstein wrote to Wolff.
Four years earlier, as Republicans prepared for a presidential primary debate on December 15, 2015, Wolff told Epstein that CNN had planned to ask Trump “tonight about his relationship with you,” either during or following the event.
“If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?” Epstein replied.
“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff wrote back to Epstein. “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt. Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.”
Trump was not asked about the matter during the debate, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
What Michael Wolff Has Said About Epstein
Wolff spoke about Epstein at length last November on his podcast, Fire and Fury, describing his relationship with Trump, the pair’s Playboy lifestyles, and claims of embarrassing photographs found in Epstein’s safe.
Trump and Epstein became close in the 1980s, connecting over their affinities for “money, women and status,” Wolff said last year.
“We now see Epstein as the sexual monster,” he recalled. “But certainly, at least in Epstein’s telling, he and Trump were, in this regard, brothers in arms.”
Epstein believed he could associate with Trump to make his actions appear more reasonable, according to Wolff, who said the pair also had competed to win over the late Princess Diana of Wales.
“There was one point in which they had a competition about who would be the first one to sleep with Princess Diana,” Wolff said. “Now, I don’t think that ever happened. These guys were playing at the highest stakes they could play.”
Epstein Emails Mention Donald Trump: What We Know
Epstein, whose death by suicide has prompted intense scrutiny, mentioned Trump multiple times in private messages to Maxwell and Wolff between 2011 and 2019, according to emails released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.
In 2011, Epstein told Maxwell, who was later convicted of sex trafficking: “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump.”
“[A victim] spent hours at my house with him,” Epstein wrote Maxwell in April 2011. “He has never once been mentioned.”
“I have been thinking about that,” Maxwell replied.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt criticized Democrats on the House Oversight Committee for releasing the messages, characterizing them as “selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump,” CNN reported Wednesday.
“These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again,” Leavitt said.
The Daily Beast has also obtained Wolff’s recordings of Epstein, which Trump’s camp has dismissed as “false smears,” according to the outlet.
Michael Wolff on Donald Trump
Wolff, who could not be immediately reached for comment Wednesday, said he didn’t “quite remember the context” surrounding the recently released emails.
“But I was engaged then in an in-depth conversation with Epstein about his relationship with Trump and this seems to be part of that conversation,” Wolff told CNN.
Wolff, meanwhile, accused Trump of being “incredibly incompetent” in a recent interview prior to the release of the three email exchanges. He also noted Trump’s extraordinary political endurance.
“The story goes on and I haven’t wanted it to go on,” Wolff told Monocle.com in late September. “His relationship with the truth has profoundly changed the nature of the times we live in. My hopeful side says that Donald Trump is a unique and utterly sui generis figure. But the other side is this: the basic proposition in the 2024 campaign was that the system would destroy him or he would destroy the system. And we are now seeing, every day, that the system is being destroyed.”
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