Nicolai Haugsted
Michael Wolff reveals the chilling response Jeffrey Epstein allegedly gave when pressed to release Trump photos.
Jeffrey Epstein possessed information about Donald Trump that he considered potentially dangerous to make public, according to Trump biographer Michael Wolff via Rawstory.
Wolff has spent years recounting conversations he says he had with Epstein before the disgraced financier’s arrest and death in 2019. His latest account reaches back to the 2016 presidential campaign, when Trump was moving closer to the White House and Epstein was allegedly becoming increasingly uneasy about what that could mean for him.
Among the material Wolff says Epstein possessed were photographs showing Trump alongside young women who regularly spent time at Epstein’s home.
Wolff claims he encouraged Epstein to release them.
Epstein refused.
“I may be a pedophile, but I don’t have a death wish,” Epstein told him, according to Wolff.
No publicly available evidence establishes that Trump threatened Epstein over photographs or ordered anyone to harm him. Wolff’s account describes Epstein’s alleged fear and interpretation of the situation rather than evidence that such a threat existed.
Wolff says he pushed Epstein to go public
Wolff revisited the episode Tuesday on Inside Trump’s Head, his podcast with Joanna Coles.
Coles read from a recent Substack column in which Wolff described trying to persuade Epstein to speak publicly about the man he once called a friend.
“I tried to encourage and then to push Epstein to talk publicly about Trump, including to release photographs he had of Trump with the young women in constant attendance at Epstein’s house,” Wolff wrote.
Epstein’s alleged response left little ambiguity about his own state of mind.
“I may be a pedophile, but I don’t have a death wish.”
Coles said the remark “gives you a shiver.”
Wolff agreed, particularly “through the perspective of what happened to him.”
Epstein died in federal custody in August 2019. His death was ruled a suicide.
Trump’s rise reportedly made Epstein nervous
According to Wolff, Epstein closely followed Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Epstein reportedly regarded Trump as “completely idiotic” while simultaneously believing his former friend had a genuine chance of winning.
“I know Donald Trump, and he will do anything,” Wolff recalled Epstein telling him.
“He is more shameless than any politician, more dedicated to getting attention than any other human being.”
Wolff said Trump’s march toward the presidency changed how Epstein viewed the information he possessed.
“He became afraid of the fact that his old friend was going to become president,” Wolff said, because Epstein “knew so much” about Trump.
“He was full of basically dangerous information about this man who he thought would become president, who then did become president.”
Wolff’s characterization cannot independently establish what information Epstein actually possessed or whether it would have been damaging to Trump.
Epstein reportedly worried he had said too much
Wolff later included Epstein’s account of his falling-out with Trump in his 2019 book Siege.
According to the biographer, Epstein read the material and subsequently called him from Paris with second thoughts.
“I think that might have been a mistake on my part to say all that,” Epstein allegedly told Wolff.
“I might have screwed myself.”
Roughly a month later, Epstein was arrested after returning to the United States from France, Wolff said.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged Epstein in July 2019 with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors, alleging that he had sexually exploited and abused dozens of underage girls.
Epstein was dead little more than a month after his arrest.
Wolff floats two theories about the arrest
Wolff also questioned why federal authorities revived a criminal case against Epstein years after he had entered a controversial non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in Florida.
“The choices are either Trump has ordered the Justice Department to arrest Epstein or the Southern District investigating Donald Trump has arrested Epstein, breaking the non-prosecution agreement in an effort to get him to testify against Donald Trump,” Wolff said.
Neither scenario has been established by the evidence cited in Wolff’s account.
His description of the non-prosecution agreement also leaves out a crucial legal distinction.
The 2007 deal was negotiated by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. Prosecutors in New York argued in 2019 that it did not prevent the Southern District of New York from prosecuting Epstein, both because the agreement did not bind their office and because the indictment included alleged conduct in New York involving New York victims.
A federal judge subsequently reached the same basic conclusion when Ghislaine Maxwell attempted to invoke Epstein’s agreement in her own criminal case, ruling that the Florida deal did not bind prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.
Wolff’s two proposed explanations for Epstein’s arrest therefore should not be treated as the only possible explanations for why prosecutors were legally able to bring the 2019 case.
