‘Help Finish Him’: Anti-Trump Hack Urged Epstein To Sink Trump’s 2016 Campaign

Sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was encouraged by anti-Trump author Michael Wolff to sink then-Republican nominee Donald Trump’s presidential campaign less than two weeks before the 2016 election, according to emails made public on Wednesday.

Emails included in a 20,000-page document dump by Congress show that Wolff acted more like an adviser than a journalist during many of his discussions with Epstein, with their email conversations often focusing on Trump. In one email sent in October 2016 under the subject line “Now could be the time,” Wolff told Epstein that he had an “opportunity to come forward this week and talk about Trump in such a way that could garner you great sympathy and help finish him.” Wolff sent Epstein the message shortly after Trump’s vulgar “Access Hollywood” tapes were revealed, embroiling his campaign in scandal.

In October 2016, so-called journalist Michael Wolff was conspiring with convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to “finish” Trump. A few months later, Wolff was granted several months of all-access privileges in the Trump White House. Make it make sense. pic.twitter.com/5CYtXAtvZo

— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) November 12, 2025

In January 2016, Wolff emailed Epstein, telling him that he could be “Trump’s bullet,” The New York Post reported. That email was sent in response to Epstein telling Wolff that more reporters had begun approaching him as Trump’s campaign gained traction. Later that month, Wolff wrote to Epstein, “NYT called me about you and Trump. Also, Hillary campaign digging deeply. Again, you should consider preempting.”

Trump and Epstein were friends in the 1990s and early 2000s, but the president has not been accused of any wrongdoing related to Epstein’s sex crimes. In one email released on Wednesday, Epstein told Wolff that Trump “knew about the girls” and that Trump asked Epstein’s co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, “to stop.” That email was included in a small dump from House Democrats on Wednesday morning, which the White House said was “selectively leaked” and designed “to create a fake narrative to smear” Trump. House Republicans later released 20,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate.

In yet another email between the two men in December 2015, Wolff and Epstein appeared to be strategizing on political tactics surrounding Trump.

“I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you–either on air or in scrum afterwards,” Wolff wrote to Epstein on December 15, 2015, the same day that CNN hosted a Republican presidential primary debate.

“If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?” Epstein replied.

“I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable P.R. and political currency,” Wolff wrote of what he thought Trump’s strategy should be. “You can hang him in a way that generates positive benefits for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt. Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.”

After Trump won the 2016 election over Democrat Hillary Clinton, Wolff boasted in an email to Epstein that he was “doing this Trump book for a pile of money and with so far quite a bit of co-operation from them.” Wolff added, “[Trump] called me the other day and spent 45 minutes on the phone ranting and raving about the media–alarming.” Wolff then asked Epstein to connect him to people who could help him with an “off-the-record perspective on White House procedures,” according to the Post.

Wolff gained access to Trump’s White House during the president’s first term, and his book, “Fire and Fury,” sold millions of copies in 2018 by offering an inside view of the first Trump administration. The book also bashed the president as “an absentee father” and “notorious womanizer,” and Trump called Wolff’s work “trash” and “full of lies.”

Critics have pointed out numerous holes in Wolff’s reporting throughout the years, including in “Fire and Fury.” Wolff was also blasted recently for his reporting on Epstein and Trump when he wrote a piece for The Daily Beast linking first lady Melania Trump to Epstein, alleging that she was “very involved” in the scandal. The Daily Beast removed Wolff’s article from its site, writing in an editor’s note, “Upon reflection, we have determined that the article did not meet our standards and has therefore been removed from our platforms.”

Wolff has written columns for various media outlets, including USA Today, Vanity Fair, and The Hollywood Reporter.