by Ben Smith at SEMAFOR
The Scoop
Buried deep in the House Oversight Committee’s recent release of 20,000 emails from Jeffrey Epstein’s inbox is an 8,684-word profile of the disgraced financier. The article has no byline and, in the way of these document dumps, isn’t obviously connected to anything else. But the amused, morally ambiguous tone is familiar from some of the great biographies of the age — biographies of Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump, in particular.
The author is Michael Wolff, he confirmed when I called him about it Sunday.
“Jesus, it’s pretty good!” he said, after giving the PDF a read at his home in Amagansett.
Epstein, as Wolff has written before, wanted the incisive and divisive New York media writer to rehabilitate his damaged reputation. By 2014, Wolff was spending hours at Epstein’s mansion watching a parade of powerful men troop through, and considering writing. But he asked that Epstein persuade friends, particularly Bill Gates, to talk to him. Wolff says he sent over the draft to give Epstein a sense of what could come out of the reporting process.
“It could be like this — but I need to have access to everybody,” Wolff recalled telling him. “I’m trying to lead him along to give me something, and the something would be: Give me access to everybody.”
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Back to Wolff in a moment, and to questions of…
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