The Michael Wolff Bombshell: The Emails, The Tapes, The Lies — And the Epstein Connection He Can’t Explain
How America’s “golden boy” went from Trump slayer to Epstein confidant overnight.
by Ellie Leonard, Blue Amp Media Contributing Editor
On October 22, 2025 Michael Wolff launched his Substack to a hero’s welcome. America’s golden boy. The only one who knew “everything” about Jeffrey Epstein, and who had the potential to take down the Trump Administration to boot. The date wasn’t a coincidence. It just so happened to be the very same day he filed a lawsuit against Melania Trump, to counter her threats of litigation against him for claiming that she was “very involved” in Epstein’s social circle, and that ultimately it’s how she met Donald Trump.
“Trump liked to ‘f-- his friends’ wives and first slept with Melania on his ‘Lolita Express.’” - Michael Wolff
In order to pay for his legal fees, Wolff set up a GoFundMe that currently sits at $770,901. And I, like many long-suffering Wolff supporters, was all-in. Let’s help this poor man fight the machine. But it was at that point that I started to feel a tickle, a little voice in the back of my head that said “hold on a minute.” Because according to Forbes, Wolff was one of the highest-paid authors of 2018, selling 1.7 million copies of his book Fire and Fury in just three weeks, handing him a payout of $13 million over a two-year period.
“This GoFundMe page is not only meant to help pay these legal costs but to fund the opportunity for all of us to see behind the dark curtain of the Epstein affair. I hope you’ll help support this effort. Thank you.” - Michael Wolff
THE EMAILS
On November 12th, the House Oversight Committee released nearly 23,000 pages of Epstein documents, including thousands of emails between Epstein and people like former Harvard President Larry Summers, former Israeli PM Ehud Barak, lawyers Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr, and, yes, Michael Wolff. And America’s golden boy suddenly plummeted.
In a series of conversations that began as early as September 2014, Wolff seemed not only to be working as a journalist, but also a confidant, even an advisor. And what started as a pitch to write Epstein’s personal story—though whether from Epstein or Wolff is unclear—turned into a means of commiseration, and a rebuilding of Epstein’s public persona.
“I think a strategic plan, involving your public identity, philanthropic activities and interests, and the development of media allies, ought finally to be put in place. A big, comprehensive, expensive effort.” - Michael Wolff
Much of Michael Wolff’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein seemed to be around their proximity to the #MeToo Movement, which neither man could stomach, Epstein for obvious reasons. They both had friends and colleagues taken down by #MeToo, and pondered whether they might be next.
Wolff and Epstein often discussed what they thought was the unjust boycott of filmmaker Woody Allen, a close mutual friend. Allen, who traveled with Epstein and edited films at his Upper East Side mansion, was no stranger to cancellation after being accused of sexual abuse by his seven-year-old daughter, Dylan Farrow, leading to one of the biggest public scandals of the early ‘90s. Allen would rebut these claims, but never fully regained his public image, and struggled to find distribution for his films in the U.S. Wolff seemed bent on helping Allen’s image alongside Epstein’s, a kind of “cancel-culture matchmaker,” if you will.
With a story this explosive — the U.S. seizing a Venezuelan oil tanker — you can’t rely on a biased news bubble.
So I opened Ground News — 135 sources side-by-side: AP, BBC, El Mundo — tagged by ownership; government, corporate, private equity, independent.
Ground News exposes who’s behind headlines; how different media cover the same story.
For the truth Subscribe to Ground News NOW! Get 40% off w/ our link! https://ground.news/blue
—Cliff
THE EPSTEIN TAPES
But then there are the interviews, “hundreds of hours” Wolff claims.
“At some point, I began recording. 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.” - Michael Wolff
And it was true that at this point Wolff’s full focus was to infiltrate the Trump campaign and bring it to its knees. But this was several months after he began corresponding with Epstein, and nine years after Epstein’s very public arrest for prostitution of a minor in Florida. And yet he hit record over and over again.
On a personal level, I wanted those tapes. I’ve run a small transcription business for over a decade and the Epstein tapes are the Holy Grail of NDA-level, off-the-record conversations. And believe me, I’ve asked. And yet Wolff hasn’t released them to anyone, claiming networks are “scared of being sued by the Trump administration” and that they “don’t want to see Jeffrey Epstein in any more than a single lens through which we view him.”
Translation: Wolff thinks of Epstein not only through the “lens” of child sex offenses, but as a normal, relatable person.
I’m trying hard to imagine which network, today, would say no. But I’m also of the opinion that Wolff is waiting for money, and a lot of it, for the tapes to exchange hands. He denies this claim.
I texted Wolff to ask if he wouldn’t consider releasing the tapes on a Google Drive like the House Oversight had done. Simple, yet efficient. I won’t hold my breath while I await his response.
So we have to ask ourselves, why not? Why not release five years of interviews that could answer every question we have about the who, what, where, when, why, and how of the Epstein Files. And especially after Wolff’s sudden drop in popularity, and especially considering the buyer’s remorse of nearly $800,000 in GoFundMe payments, why wouldn’t he now want to release those files?
Well, it could have to do with a much longer, less-documented friendship between Michael Wolff and Jeffrey Epstein.
WOLFF’S HISTORY WITH EPSTEIN
Michael Wolff has said in several interviews that he met Jeffrey Epstein while attending a TED conference “as far back as, maybe, 2001.” Other sources cite 2002, when Epstein flew a handful of scientists and authors on his private jet. Wolff claimed these conferences were Epstein’s “hunting grounds,” looking for interesting and complicated personalities. But it was Wolff, himself, in that handful of authors that flew on the notorious financier’s plane, and he wasn’t unaware of Epstein’s entourage of teenage girls.
“You didn’t know what to make of this ... Who is this man with this very large airplane and these very tall girls?” - Michael Wolff
Just a year or so later, “increasingly disillusioned matchmaker” Michael Wolff compiled an “all-star team of New York power,” including Mort Zuckerman, Harvey Weinstein, Nelson Peltz, Donny Deutsch, and Jeffrey Epstein, to purchase New York Magazine for $44 million. They would be outbid by Bruce Wasserstein, an investment banker. But why was Wolff involved at all? At the time he was working as a contributing writer, though not on the magazine’s payroll, and hoped this might lead to a bigger editorial role. It didn’t.
And for the next eight years, while Epstein dealt with his first round of legal battles, and Wolff went on to work as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, not much is known about their interactions. They both enjoyed collecting people; they both enjoyed New York’s high society; and they both had a propensity for younger women.
“FEMME FATALE”
Michael Wolff married his first wife, Alison Anthoine, in the early 1980s, and they had three children together. But in 2006, when Vanity Fair hired a new research intern, Wolff’s 30-plus-year marriage began to waver. When Wolff launched his own news site, Newser, in 2008, he hired Victoria Floethe as a staff writer, and by April 2009 their affair was public knowledge. Chris Rovzar of New York Magazine hinted at it with his article “Let’s Play ‘Guess Who Michael Wolff Is Writing About’!” quoting Wolff:
“What do men in their fifties and sixties know about girls in their twenties?...Middle-aged men, so flummoxed by the desires and ambitions of young women, seem especially easy prey to girls with blogs.” - Michael Wolff
Rovzar knew we knew. But even if we didn’t, Floethe was prepared to spill the beans on her love story with a 27-year age gap, writing an opinion piece in The Spectator titled “How I Became the ‘Femme Fatale’ of New York Gossip.” In it she detailed “a rather ordinarily complicated New York romantic life.”
“The circumstances of my disgrace? I had a low-level job at Vanity Fair — so in scandal parlance I was an ‘intern’, although, actually, I was a freelance researcher on an hourly wage; my romance with Michael, a married man, was, in the telling, a torrid office affair.” - Victoria Floethe
It may have been satire, but Wolff’s affair with Floethe would continue publicly, and the couple announced they were expecting a baby in 2015. And although Wolff and Anthoine separated in 2009, when he filed for divorce in 2014 she was never told. “Well, this is the first time I’ve heard of it,” she said, when contacted by Gawker.
We will never know what drew Michael Wolff to Jeffrey Epstein. They socialized in the same circles, hobnobbed with the same crème de la crème, and hunted for the same big names for their little black books. They both knew they were a target for #MeToo and #TimesUp, but at least in their emails they didn’t seem to care. Maybe it was Epstein’s charisma that seduced Wolff, just like he had a long line of academics, politicians, financiers, and global elite. Or maybe it was simply a shared hatred for Donald Trump.
I’d like to ask Michael Wolff all of these questions. I’d like to see, hear, and transcribe those 100 hours of tapes inside restaurants, over the phone, and in Epstein’s massive 71st Street mansion. I’d like to sit across the table from him and get some real answers about where the journalism stopped and the entanglement began. But I don’t think that will ever happen. And as we step onto the precipice of history, the release of the Epstein files, one can only wonder what’s next.
I’m sure Michael does, though he’d never let on. How does he feel about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein?
“As my mother would say, you get more with a little honey.” - Michael Wolff
Great and insightful article. I too have/had a lot of questions about the tapes and Wolff’s bromance with Epstein. Hilarious that he adds the snarky part about Patterson not being a respected writer (Patterson is one of the highest-paid authors of all time, with a net worth estimated around $800 million, and Wolff's net worth is estimated around $20M). I’d say Patterson is a lot more respectable as a writer and as a person than Wolff.
I will be a much happier person when Trump leaves the universe.