President Donald Trump has threatened to sue the journalist Michael Wolff, accusing the author of “conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein” to harm him.
The president issued the threat on Air Force One a day after a fresh tranche of Epstein files were published, revealing that multiple women made allegations of sexual abuse by Trump to the FBI, which he denies.
Trump, 79, vented to reporters about Epstein “conspiring” as he flew from Washington D.C. to his Palm Beach home at Mar-a-Lago, wearing a tuxedo after attending a secretive elitist gathering.
“He was conspiring with Wolff to do harm to me politically,” Trump said. “That’s not a friend.” He added, “So we’ll probably sue Wolff on that.”
However Wolff, the co-host of hit Daily Beast podcast Inside Trump’s Head, is already involved in litigation with the Trump family. He is suing Melania Trump under laws designed to protect free speech after she threatened him with a $1 billion lawsuit for speaking about her ties to Epstein.
In response to the latest Trump threat, Wolff told the Beast, “This is the third or fourth time the Trumps have threatened to sue me. So far this has only resulted in me suing them. So, bring it on. Let’s sue each other. I have nothing to hide, but the Trumps surely do.”
Currently, Melania’s lawyers are trying to get the case against her dismissed by claiming that he has not properly served the first lady; on Inside Trump’s Head, Wolff spoke about how his own legal team has been unable to get papers to her because she lives behind Secret Service protection and her lawyers will not accept them. On his Substack, Howl, Wolff vowed, “I’ll see the first lady in court.”
The threat of a lawsuit is an escalation of Trump and his aides’ rhetoric against Wolff, whom White House Communications Director Steven Cheung regularly assails as “a lying sack of s–t.”
Trump and Epstein had been close friends for years, photographs and video show. They partied together in New York and Florida, and Trump is named in flight logs of passengers on Epstein’s private planes.
Wolff spent large amounts of time with Epstein before his death, and released recordings before the 2024 election of Epstein calling himself Trump’s “closest friend.”
The pedophile financier had asked Wolff to write his biography in 2015, and the two met and exchanged emails for some years, with Epstein volunteering information about Trump.
Epstein was a source when Wolff wrote his bestselling Fire and Fury, which detailed the chaos of the first months of Trump’s first term.
The first tranche of Epstein files, published in November 2025, showed Wolff apparently offering advice to Epstein in 2015 on how to get Trump to “hang himself” with his own words if asked about the duo’s relationship, and how the pervert could engineer a situation to have the then-presidential candidate in “debt” to him. Wolff was also shown to have urged Epstein to “finish” the then-Republican nominee just before the 2016 election, and in 2019 to have had Epstein tell him, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”
After their publication Wolff told Inside Trump’s Head co-host Joanna Coles that the emails were certainly “embarrassing” in hindsight, but showed that he was trying to get at the truth of the relationship between Trump and Epstein long before others were pursuing the story, which has come to define the president’s second term. “I think as, as my mother would say, you get more with a little honey,” he said.
The latest tranche of documents are not short of Trump-adjacent revelations. They show how Elon Musk and Howard Lutnick, members of Trump’s inner circle, had tried to visit Epstein’s notorious island long after he was known to be a convicted pedophile, with Musk asking which night would have the “wildest party” and talking about wanting to “let loose,” while Epstein’s emails with MAGA kingpin Steve Bannon were also exposed. They are also littered with emails and text messages in which the financier discusses Trump, sometimes referring to him as “Donald.”
Trump had been dining with the ultra-elite Alfalfa Club in Washington, D.C., sitting at the same table as former president George W. Bush, before boarding Air Force One and making the threat to Wolff. The secretive event, also attended by billionaires including Jeff Bezos, does not allow photography or recordings of speeches and the club does not disclose a full list of members.
On the plane, Trump was asked by a reporter, “What did you think of the latest released Epstein files? And do you think your critics will be satisfied with this release?”
He replied, “It looked like this guy Wolff, who’s a writer, was conspiring with Epstein to do harm to me.
“And 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—that 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. So, we’ll probably sue Wolff on that.”
A reporter tried to ask him, “Did you have any knowledge,” but was cut off by Trump, who said, “Maybe the Epstein estate, I guess. I don’t know. But we’re going to certainly sue Wolff.”
He was asked, “You want to sue the Epstein estate?” and said, “We may. I guess so. Because he was conspiring with Wolff to do harm to me politically. That’s not a friend.”
Trump’s lawsuits against the press have included suing ABC and CBS. Their parent companies both folded and paid him $15 million and $16 million, respectively, despite legal experts saying they would almost certainly have defeated the president in court.
Trump is currently suing The New York Times for $15 billion, claiming it sought to undermine his 2024 campaign and disparage his business career by revealing details of his multiple financial failings. The first set of legal papers in the case was thrown out by a judge for being “florid and enervating,” and far longer than legally permitted. He refiled, and the Times is fighting the case, which it has called “intimidation tactics.”
Those around Trump have also tried to sue the press, including taking legal action against the Daily Beast. Earlier in January, Trump’s former campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita settled his suit against the Beast after we revealed the millions that had flowed through his company while he ran the campaign.
LaCivita had demanded that the story be retracted, plus punitive and “triple damages,” but ended up with none of those. He had said “can’t wait to play my game of discovery,” but settled without handing over his own tax returns or financial details.
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