Jeffrey Epstein was scared of Donald Trump, the president’s longtime biographer alleged.
Best-selling author Michael Wolff said on his Substack, Howl, that the convicted sex offender and former friend of the president was afraid of Trump and took his presidential aspirations “more seriously than anyone I knew.”
“He was afraid of Trump, terrified perhaps,” Wolff wrote. “And when Trump won, Epstein saw the game change for him personally.”
The author wrote that Epstein thought he had information dangerous to both himself and Trump—information Wolff encouraged him to share publicly. But the sex offender declined.
“I may be a pedophile, but I don’t have a death wish,” Epstein said, according to Wolff.
However, Epstein did recount his 2004 real estate fight with Trump to Wolff. The dispute allegedly prompted Epstein to threaten Trump over a purported money-laundering scheme tied to a Russian oligarch.
Not long after, the Palm Beach Police Department began investigating Epstein over allegations involving underage girls at his home. According to Wolff, Epstein credited Trump with prompting the investigation.
Wolff wrote that shortly after the story appeared in his book Siege, Epstein told Wolff that revealing the information had been a “mistake.“ A month later, Epstein was arrested by the FBI while returning from Paris.
The sex offender believed he knew too much and “saw himself as the story behind the story,” Wolff said.
“I believe that Epstein understood the wholly unique position he was in: he had led a depraved life—one which the president of the United States had participated in,” he wrote.
“Epstein, for Trump, was a dangerous man. But Epstein understood, based on firsthand experience, that Trump was a dangerous man for him—as president, maximally dangerous.”
The author explained that Trump’s election as president was Epstein’s “main preoccupation,” even amid his own legal battles.
“It was an obsession born out of his personal understanding of his old friend, and, I believe, his particular fear of him,” he added. “You can’t evaluate Epstein’s friendship with Trump, his obsession with him, and his fear, without seeing it in the context of the steps Trump’s government took against him—and of Epstein’s unlikely, if not implausible, end.”
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