Author Michael Wolff corresponded with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and advised him about how to deal with then–presidential candidate Donald Trump, the New York Times reports.
Epstein was convicted in 2008 after pleading guilty to charges of procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute, and he was arrested in 2019 on charges of sex trafficking. He died in prison later that year; his death was ruled a suicide, although some have speculated that he was murdered. Epstein’s friendship with Trump and other elites has been the subject of intense interest for several years, with a popular bipartisan movement agitating for the Department of Justice to release its files on the case.
Wolff is the author of four books sharply critical of Trump: Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House; Siege: Trump Under Fire; Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency; and All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America.
Wolff’s correspondence with Epstein was revealed Wednesday, part of thousands of pages of documents released by the House Oversight Committee. In an email from December of 2015, the Times reports, Wolff advised Epstein on how to answer questions from CNN about Trump.
“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff wrote. “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.”
Wolff addressed the emails on the Daily Beast’s Inside Trump’s Head podcast, which he co-hosts.
“What emails sound like—would one have rewritten in hindsight? Yeah, of course,” he said. “Emails always are—that’s embarrassing.”
He said that his correspondence with Epstein was part of a “play-acting” strategy in pursuit of a story.
“I’m a writer who manages to make relationships that let me tell a story in the ways that the New York Times or other, very reputable, journalistic organizations are unable to tell,” he said.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
