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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\u2014formally joining his legal-defense team and sending fawningly supportive letters after his conviction\u2014only to turn around and publish a scathing book portraying him as a sociopath. Observing McGinniss\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Wolff is the author of several best sellers, including 2018\u2019s dishy Donald Trump chronicle Fire and Fury, but he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you should let him hang himself,\u201d Wolff wrote to Epstein about Trump in December 2015. \u201cIf he says he hasn\u2019t 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.\u201d 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 \u201cin such a way that could garner you great sympathy and help finish him.\u201d<\/p>\n
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: \u201cWhat I want to say is, in this particular email, it sounds like you\u2019re advising a convicted pedophile about what to do, and you\u2019re colluding with him against a potential presidential candidate.\u201d Wolff spun his wheels a bit in answering: \u201cWhat emails sound like\u2014would one have rewritten them in hindsight? Yeah. Of course. You know, emails always are: Oh, that\u2019s embarrassing.\u201d<\/p>\n
When I emailed Wolff yesterday, he was more forthright. \u201cYou ingratiate yourself so that people\u2014your subject\u2014will talk to you,\u201d he wrote. To some degree, this is unquestionable. Journalists work to get sources to talk to them, including by suggesting what\u2019s 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. \u201cI think you draw the line at what you write\u2014ingratiation stops there,\u201d he replied, citing his damning reporting on Epstein in an essay in his book Too Famous. \u201cThat\u2019s what the ingratiation earned me.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
One reason for the tapes\u2019 muted effect may be that Wolff\u2019s credibility was already damaged. He has long inspired acid reactions among other reporters. Some of this is surely due to jealousy\u2014Wolff 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.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t just my opinion. Here\u2019s what he wrote in Fire and Fury: \u201cMany 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.\u201d 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, \u201cOne of the problems with Wolff\u2019s omniscience is that while he may know all, he gets some of it wrong.\u201d The Daily Beast recently retracted and apologized for a story that cited Wolff\u2019s 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\u2019s threat took his claims out of context and was meant to chill speech.)<\/p>\n
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\u2019s possible that he was telling the truth here, the emails show that Wolff was working hard to wring just such material out of him.<\/p>\n
The cost of operating this way is high. Trust in the press is at a historic low; Wolff\u2019s 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\u2019s methods undermine him too. His Epstein reporting didn\u2019t get the traction he\u2019d hoped it would, and his closeness with Epstein tarnishes his own standing.<\/p>\n
Not that Wolff seems to see it that way: He is defiantly confident that whatever it takes to get a scoop is justified. Malcolm\u2019s famous opening sentence of The Journalist and the Murderer is too cynical a view of journalism as a whole, but it seems apropos here. \u201cEvery journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible,\u201d she declares. Wolff is certainly not stupid.<\/p>\n
Related:<\/p>\n
Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:<\/strong><\/p>\n Today\u2019s News<\/strong><\/p>\n Dispatches<\/strong><\/p>\n Explore all of our newsletters here.<\/em><\/p>\n Evening Read<\/strong><\/p>\n Illustration by Ben Kothe \/ The Atlantic<\/p>\n Why Hotel-Room Cancellations Disappeared<\/p>\n By Ian Bogost<\/p>\n 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 disruptions at U.S. airports. If my flight were canceled, the airline would refund me for my ticket. But my hotel room in Charlotte, North Carolina, appeared to be another matter. I clicked around the booking website on my screen. Its policy on cancellation was austere: You could void your reservation only if you did so three days in advance. If your plans happened to fall through unexpectedly the night before (because, let\u2019s say, your nation\u2019s legislature had failed to pass a budget), then you\u2019d be out of luck.<\/p>\n Read the full article.<\/p>\n More From The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n Culture Break<\/p>\n Listen. In the inaugural episode of Charlie Warzel\u2019s Galaxy Brain, Hank Green talks about outrage, creativity, and what exactly went wrong with the internet.<\/p>\n Watch. Noah Baumbach\u2019s new film, Jay Kelly (streaming on Netflix), takes a gamble with its fantastically successful protagonist, David Sims writes.<\/p>\n Play our daily crossword.<\/p>\n PS<\/p>\n Staff writer Caity Weaver is on a quest to find the best free restaurant bread in all of America and wants to hear from you! Which is your favorite? Fill out this form, or drop Caity a note at [email\u00a0protected]<\/span>.<\/p>\n \u2014 The editors<\/p>\n Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.<\/p>\n When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting <\/em>The Atlantic.<\/em><\/p>\n\n