Newly released photos from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate leave many unresolved questions about the late sex offender’s relationship with Donald Trump, the president’s biographer says.
Speaking on the Daily Beast podcast Inside Trump’s Head, author and co-host Michael Wolff provided context for some of the images that Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released, but without any background information.
In addition to Epstein and Trump, other subjects in the pictures—some of which were previously available to the public—include former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon, 72, and controversial film director Woody Allen, 90.
Wolff first addressed the undated black-and-white photo of Trump with five women whose faces are blacked out. The president has tried but failed to put to rest the controversy over his ties to Epstein.
“The Democrats are blacking out their faces, and the implication here is that they are blacking out their faces because these might have been victims, I suppose, of Donald Trump,” Wolff claimed. “It’s a weird signal that is being sent.”
When reached for comment, the White House questioned Wolff’s credibility.
“Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s--t and has been proven to be a fraud,” Communications Director Steven Cheung told the Daily Beast. “He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
Wolff then described a photograph of Epstein and Bannon in what he said was Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. Wolff, who interviewed Epstein before his death, said the year could have been 2018 or early 2019.
“This is in Epstein’s study,” Wolff told co-host Joanna Coles. “The study is on the second floor of that mammoth townhouse, what people say might be the largest private residence in Manhattan. Actually, Epstein said this. I’m not sure it’s exactly true, but it is certainly up there.”
“The study runs... across the width of the house. So somewhere near... approaching a quarter of a New York City block, a very baronial room, kind of a movie set. So this would be, if you were creating a Jeffrey Epstein kind of diabolical character in the movies, this is the room that the set designer would create for that character,” he continued. “And then we have Bannon sitting in front of the desk.”
Wolff then recounted what Bannon told Epstein when Wolff introduced them: that Epstein was the only person he was afraid of during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
After addressing a photo of Epstein and Allen on what appears to be a movie set, as well as one of former Harvard professor Larry Summers, his wife, and who appears to be Allen on a plane, Wolff moved on to Epstein and Bannon taking a picture of themselves in the mirror—“like teenage girls,” as Coles put it.
“I’ve spoken before about how close they became— quickly, very close, and their bond was Donald Trump,” Wolff said. “They both had such deep—and to say the very least, mixed—feelings about Donald Trump, that they immediately became friends because they just had an inexhaustible conversation on this subject: Trump’s stupidity, Trump’s perfidy, Trump’s improbability. And they went on and on and on at endless length about this.”
Virgin founder Richard Branson, 75, and inventor Dean Kamen, 74, popped up in another photo with Epstein, this one in a tropical-looking setting.
“And that’s another point here, you know, that these photographs will now cause everyone enormous problems. But we don’t know the people who are not in these photographs. So, in other words, it’s entirely random who surfaces, who doesn’t. And just because you don’t surface doesn’t mean you weren’t there,” Wolff said.
Former president Bill Clinton, 79, is also seen with musician Jimmy Buffett, Epstein, and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking. Bill Gates, 70, and former Prince Andrew, who in October was stripped of his royal titles over his links to Epstein, are in another photograph.
Wolff concluded that, while interesting, the photos only beg more questions.
“In the end, we’re left with evidence, stuff that is submitted as evidence, but we don’t know what it’s evidence of,” he said.
That materials from Epstein’s estate are “being weaponized by each side,” Wolff added, “is not going to be helpful in the long process of figuring out what this means and what happened and who to blame.”
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