President Donald Trump has indicated he plans to sue discredited journalist and author Michael Wolff for “conspiring” with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to harm him politically.
The legal threat came after the Department of Justice released more than 3.5 million pages in the latest trove of Epstein files on Friday.
“It looked like this guy Wolff, who’s a writer, was conspiring with Epstein to do harm to me,” Trump said Saturday night during a press gaggle aboard Air Force One. “I didn’t see it myself, but I was told by some very important people that not only does it absolve me; it’s the opposite of what people were hoping — you know, the radical Left.”
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“Wolff, who’s a third-rate writer, was conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to hurt me politically or otherwise, and that came through loud and clear,” he added. “So we’ll probably sue Wolff on that.”
The president noted he may also file a lawsuit against the Epstein estate, but confirmed that he’ll “certainly” sue Wolff.
Epstein “was conspiring with Wolff to do harm to me politically. That’s not a friend,” he concluded.
The convicted sex offender apparently tried to set up a meeting between Wolff and lawyer Ken Starr, who famously led the 1990s Whitewater investigation into then-President Bill Clinton. The meeting was said to be centered on a possible indictment against Trump.
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“My good friend Michael Wolffe [sic] of Fire and Fury wanted to speak to you totally off the record. = tho[u]ghts” Epstein wrote in a May 2018 email sent to Starr. “He wanted some color on indicting a .. sitting pres, between us, he has seen a draft of one. . ) .. What does not subject to [criminal] process mean. ? l assume trump corp has non[e] of the [constitutional] baggage?”
Responding to the email later that day, Starr said he was “happy” to meet and told Epstein to give Wolff his email address.
Wolff published Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, his first of four biographies that were critical of Trump, in January 2018. That was followed by the June 2019 book Siege: Trump Under Fire, which focused on the Mueller investigation before Trump’s first impeachment later that year.
The author has been criticized for his questionable reporting methods and his works’ factual inaccuracies. Wolff’s last book on Trump saw significantly lower opening sales compared to Fire and Fury, showing public interest in his material waned as time went on.
In February 2016, Wolff interestingly called Epstein the “bullet” that could have hurt Trump’s political aspirations during the presidential election cycle that year.
In a previous email from December 2015, Wolff encouraged Epstein to blackmail Trump because the financier could generate a “debt” from him.
That exchange was released by House Democrats in November. When asked about the context of the unveiled messages, Wolff said he couldn’t remember the “specific emails or the context” but that it was an “in-depth conversation” with Epstein about Trump.
“I was trying at that time to get Epstein to talk about his relationship with Trump, and actually, he proved to be an enormously valuable source to me,” Wolff told ABC News. “Part of the context of this is that I was pushing Epstein at that point to go public with what he knew about Trump.”
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Trump has distanced himself from his past relationship with Epstein, claiming he took no part in illicit sexual activities in connection with the sex trafficker.
The DOJ has said its most recent disclosure of the Epstein files “may include fake or falsely submitted images, documents or videos.” The massive tranche of documents features many unverified sexual misconduct allegations, some of which center on Trump.