Michael Wolff’s Unsatisfying Explanation for Cozying Up to Epstein
In a recent edition of The Atlantic Daily, the spotlight falls on journalist Michael Wolff, whose controversial approach to reporting has come under scrutiny following the revelation of emails exchanged with the late Jeffrey Epstein. Wolff, best known for his sensational accounts of the Trump presidency in his bestseller “Fire and Fury,” appears to have crossed ethical lines in his interactions with Epstein, positioning himself more as a media adviser than a traditional journalist. In these emails, Wolff advised Epstein on how to manipulate public perception regarding Donald Trump, suggesting that Epstein could use Trump’s denials about their connections as leverage. This raises significant questions about the ethical boundaries of journalism, particularly in the context of Wolff’s relationship with a convicted sexual predator.
The discourse surrounding Wolff’s actions echoes themes explored by Janet Malcolm in her seminal work, “The Journalist and the Murderer,” where she examines the morally ambiguous nature of journalism. Malcolm’s assertion that journalists often engage in a duplicitous dance with their subjects resonates with Wolff’s behavior, as he sought to ingratiate himself with Epstein to extract damaging information about Trump. Critics, including fellow journalists, have long questioned Wolff’s credibility, accusing him of prioritizing sensationalism over factual integrity. This skepticism is compounded by Wolff’s history of reporting, which has been characterized by a mix of intriguing access and questionable accuracy. As trust in the media continues to erode, Wolff’s methods not only undermine his own credibility but also contribute to a broader decline in public confidence in journalism.
Ultimately, the fallout from Wolff’s correspondence with Epstein serves as a cautionary tale about the ethical dilemmas facing journalists today. While the pursuit of a compelling story is a fundamental aspect of journalism, the means by which that story is obtained can have profound implications for both the journalist’s integrity and the public’s trust. Wolff’s situation highlights the delicate balance between access and accountability, reminding us that the lines between reporting and complicity can sometimes blur in the quest for a scoop. As the media landscape evolves, the implications of Wolff’s actions may resonate far beyond his personal reputation, affecting how journalists navigate their relationships with powerful figures in the future.
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In her classic book
The Journalist and the Murderer
,
Janet Malcolm
studied how the author Joe McGinniss buttered up the accused killer Jeffrey MacDonald—formally joining his legal-defense team and sending fawningly supportive letters after his conviction—only to turn around and publish a scathing book portraying him as a sociopath. Observing McGinniss’s approach, Malcolm draws a distinction between the reporting phase, when a journalist courts her subject, and the writing phase, when she betrays them. Many reporters take offense at this depiction of their trade as shamelessly exploitative, but Michael Wolff seems to take inspiration from it.
Wolff is the author of several best sellers, including 2018’s dishy Donald Trump chronicle
Fire and Fury
, but he’s in the spotlight this week because he shows up in
newly released emails
to and from the late sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein. In the emails, Wolff appears to be positioning himself less as a reporter than as a media adviser to Epstein.
“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff wrote to Epstein about Trump in December 2015. “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.” In October 2016, after the release of a tape in which Trump boasted about sexual assault, Wolff wrote to Epstein that he could speak about Trump “in such a way that could garner you great sympathy and help finish him.”
The emails seemed to concern even Joanna Coles of
The Daily Beast
, with whom Wolff has a
podcast on Trump
. In a
discussion on Wednesday
, she told Wolff: “What I want to say is, in this particular email, it sounds like you’re advising a convicted pedophile about what to do, and you’re colluding with him against a potential presidential candidate.” Wolff spun his wheels a bit in answering: “What emails sound like—would one have rewritten them in hindsight? Yeah. Of course. You know, emails always are:
Oh, that’s embarrassing
.”
When I emailed Wolff yesterday, he was more forthright. “You ingratiate yourself so that people—your subject—will talk to you,” he wrote. To some degree, this is unquestionable. Journalists work to get sources to talk to them, including by suggesting what’s in it for the source. To what degree, though? Here, Wolff was coaching a sexual offender on how to look good. Surely, I suggested to him, there is a point at which currying favor simply goes too far. “I think you draw the line at what you write—ingratiation stops there,” he replied, citing his damning reporting on Epstein in an essay in his book
Too Famous
. “That’s what the ingratiation earned me.” In a
video on Instagram
this week, he lamented that his release of tapes of Epstein talking about Trump before the 2024 election had little impact.
One reason for the tapes’ muted effect may be that Wolff’s credibility was already damaged. He has long inspired
acid reactions
among other reporters. Some of this is surely due to jealousy—Wolff sometimes gets great access, as when he persuaded Steve Bannon to let him roam the White House for
Fire and Fury
, or in his earlier reporting on Rupert Murdoch. But some of it is because Wolff seems uninterested in bothering to sort fact from fiction, and is happy to print
juicy rumors even without proof
.
This isn’t just my opinion. Here’s what he wrote in
Fire and Fury
: “Many of the accounts of what has happened in the Trump White House are in conflict with one another; many, in Trumpian fashion, are baldly untrue. Those conflicts, and that looseness with truth, if not with reality itself, are an elemental thread of the book. Sometimes I have let the players offer their versions, in turn allowing the reader to judge them.” He can also be quite sloppy, as
more traditional competitors
are quick to note. In addition to simple errors of names and titles, critics have observed a pattern of questionable claims. As the late
journalist David Carr
put it, “One of the problems with Wolff’s omniscience is that while he may know all, he gets some of it wrong.”
The Daily Beast
recently
retracted and apologized for a
story
that cited Wolff’s reporting about connections between Epstein and Melania Trump, after she threatened to sue. (Wolff filed his own
lawsuit
in response, saying that the first lady’s threat took his claims out of context and was meant to chill speech.)
This puts the exchanges with Epstein in proper context. Wolff rightly criticizes others for their warm relationships with Epstein, but the messages reveal his own coziness with him. The problem is not just the obsequious tone, though. Wolff was able to get Epstein to talk critically about Trump in ways that no one else was, but Epstein was a notorious liar, and although it’s possible that he was telling the truth here, the emails show that Wolff was working hard to wring just such material out of him.
The cost of operating this way is high. Trust in the press is at a historic low; Wolff’s interactions with sources and what he extracts from them threaten to make that worse. (Wolff has sometimes egged on that distrust: In
Fire and Fury
, he manages to attack the mainstream press for bias against Trump while writing a vitriolic take on the president.) Wolff’s methods undermine him too. His Epstein reporting didn’t get the traction he’d hoped it would, and his closeness with Epstein tarnishes his own standing.
Not that Wolff seems to see it that way: He is defiantly confident that whatever it takes to get a scoop is justified. Malcolm’s famous opening sentence of
The Journalist and the Murderer
is too cynical a view of journalism as a whole, but it seems apropos here. “Every journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible,” she declares. Wolff is certainly not stupid.
Related:
Michael Wolff is the author Trump deserved.
(
From 2018)
Wait, are the Epstein files real now?
Here are three new stories from
The Atlantic
:
Something feels different about the economy.
Jonathan Lemire: Epstein returns at the worst time for Trump.
Four simple questions for Marjorie Taylor Greene
Today’s News
President Donald Trump directed
Attorney General Pam Bondi and the FBI to investigate
Jeffrey Epstein’s relationships with Bill Clinton and other prominent Democrats and institutions, following the release of new Epstein-related documents on Wednesday by the House Oversight Committee.
Trump
is expected to sign an order
reducing tariffs on products, reportedly including beef, tomatoes, coffee, and bananas, to help lower grocery costs, a White House official said.
More than 22 million people in Southern California
are under flood watches as a storm threatens burn-scar areas
with heavy rain, mudslides, and debris flows. Evacuation warnings are in place through this evening for multiple burn zones across Los Angeles County, officials said.
Dispatches
Time-Travel Thursdays
:
“Amid an overload of information of uncertain value,
The Atlantic
’s founders wanted to create something that was solid and enduring,” Jake Lundberg writes,
looking back to the magazine’s founding
168 years ago.
The Books Briefing
:
Vladimir Nabokov’s leap away from Russian, his native language,
was not an instantaneous, effortless transformation
, Boris Kachka writes.
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By Ian Bogost
Delayed two hours, hunched over my laptop in the Dallas Fort Worth C-terminal Admirals Club, I was frantically rearranging my plans. The government shutdown, still ongoing at the time, had caused major
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