Journalist Michael Wolff acknowledged on Thursday that newly released emails in which he gives advice to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on media strategy were “embarrassing,” but he defended his journalistic methods as tactics to get close to a rarified source.
“That’s what a journalist, a writer in that situation, does if you want to stay — if you want to be invited back the next day and the next day and the next day,” Wolff said on his “Inside Trump’s Head” podcast, which he co-hosts with The Daily Beast editor in chief Joanna Coles. He added: “As my mother would say, you get more with a little honey.”
But Wolff, a distinctive character in New York media circles and author of four books on the president, has been the target of severe criticism in the wake of the release of 20,000 emails in the Epstein case on Wednesday. The emails make clear that his dealings with the convicted sex offender went beyond reporting and into advising him on how to gain leverage over Trump.
“What is ‘journalist’ @MichaelWolffNYC doing giving PR advice to a pedophile?” asked independent journalist Tara Palmeri, who has closely covered the Epstein story. Also on X, CNN’s Aaron Blake wrote alongside one of Wolff’s emails to Epstein: “Just to be totally and emphatically clear: Michael Wolff is not a typical journalist.”
The New York Times wrote on Thursday: “The freshly released material suggests extraordinary coziness between journalist and source.” And it cited this expert: “This is not his job,” said Edward Wasserman, a professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. “He’s becoming a participant, a player and a shaper of the news he’s going to report on.”
In the Daily Beast podcast, Coles asked Wolff broadly about criticism from journalists on social media. He responded, “These are not people who have written the kind of books I’ve written.”
That’s what a journalist, a writer in that situation, does if you want to stay — if you want to be invited back the next day and the next day and the next day.
– Michael Wolff
Wolff made a distinction between himself and journalists “working within a prescribed set of rules” inside newsrooms. “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,” Wolff said.
Wolff, who gained unique access to media mogul Rupert Murdoch for his 2010 book, “The Man Who Owns the News,” and exceptional access inside the Trump White House for his 2018 book, “Fire and Fury,” acknowledged that he’s engaged in “play-acting” to ingratiate himself with sources.
“Some of the honey feels a lot when it’s a convicted pedophile,” Coles said.
“The point is to get the story of the convicted pedophile,” Wolff responded.
Coles, who isn’t shy about publishing sensational headlines on The Daily Beast, admitted being “shocked” by some of the emails, and directly questioned Wolff about them. But Coles did not express concern about publishing Wolff now that his relationship with Epstein had been clarified.
In a related instance, New York Times business journalist Landon Thomas Jr. was revealed in the emails to have had an unusually cozy relationship with Epstein, including the financier donating money to one of Thomas’ pet charities. The Times said Thomas left the paper “after editors discovered his failure to abide by our ethical standards.”
The Epstein saga, and in particular, Trump’s relationship to the late financier, exploded Wednesday upon the release of thousands of Epstein’s emails and the swearing-in of Democratic Rep. Adelita Grijalva, the final signature needed to move forward with a vote to release the government’s records.
In one email released Wednesday, dated Dec. 15, 2015, Wolff tipped off Epstein that CNN was planning to ask Trump a question about their relationship. When Epstein asked Wolff about the type of response Trump should give, the author suggested, “I think you should let him hang himself.”
“If [Trump] says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency,” Wolff told Epstein. “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.”
On the podcast, Wolff batted down the the notion he was an “adviser” to Epstein and suggested his motivation was to get to “this elemental story” of the relationship between the two powerful men.
There was also an October 2016 email, just before the presidential election, in which Wolff asked Epstein if he’d be willing “to come forward this week and talk about Trump in such a way that could garner you great sympathy and help finish him.”
Wolff said on the podcast that he was trying to get Epstein to go public with what he knew about Trump, who the author believed to be “unfit to be president of the United States.” In another email, Epstein told Wolff that Trump “knew about the girls.”
Wolff did not respond to a request for comment from TheWrap.
Wolff has faced criticism over his reporting methods and skepticism about sourcing, including following the publication of “Fire and Fury.” Wolff said he was only able to write that book because he could secure access inside the White House for seven months.
Wolff has said that Epstein, who pleaded guilty on prostitution charges in 2008 and served 13 months in jail, approached him about writing a book in 2014. “He suggested we have conversations to see if I became interested, and I did find them fascinating,” Wolff told Jonathan Alter in July.
“At some point, I began recording,” Wolff continued. “In 2015, as Trump started his campaign, Epstein became a source; I had no idea about his relationship with Trump until he began to tell me stories, which were useful.”
Wolff said he conducted over 30 sessions with Epstein, racking up around 100 hours of audio.
On the podcast, Wolff suggested that networks and streamers turned down his Epstein pitches related to the recordings, primarily, because they’re “scared of being sued by the Trump administration,” but also because they “don’t want to see Jeffrey Epstein in any more than that single lens through which we view him.”
“These tapes go all over the place,” he added. “They really show a life in full — a really strange life and clearly a diabolical life.”
