Michael Wolff's Bizarre Claim about Ellie Leonard

Michael Wolff (L); Ellie Leonard (R)

Author and journalist Ellie Leonard has been doing a lot of hard, raw work on the Jeffrey Epstein files, so if you want the facts and the latest information on what’s going on, she’s an incredible resource (subscribe to her and support her work). Leonard also runs Red Pencil Transcript, which she describes on her website as “a small company that works with podcasts, documentary films, popular shows, other authors, PhD-level research projects, and journalists at several major newspapers, including the New York and Los Angeles Times.”

Leonard tried to contact author Michael Wolff once about transcripts he has with Epstein (it sounds like he has over 100 hours of interviews with the pedophile, and he’s been sitting on them, and Leonard wants them!).

She told me she has never emailed him, which makes his response to my question unusual. It turns out Wolff has blocked Leonard here. I was curious, so on Substack notes this morning, I asked Wolff directly why he had blocked her on this platform.

He wrote: “Seems like a weird question. Substack gives you the option to block anyone. Why wouldn’t you take it? I don’t know who Leonard is, but the person kept showing up in my in-box. I get a little of [sic] mail. I try to pare it down.”

This response doesn’t make sense. First off, as you all know, you only receive newsletters from people to whom you subscribe, so he shouldn’t have been receiving Leonard’s Substacks, unless he was subscribing to them, if that’s what he was implying. Second, if she had been emailing him, it has nothing to do with her Substack, so why would he block her here?

Michael Wolff’s response to my question: “Why did you block Ellie Leonard?”

I spoke to Ellie about my exchange with Wolff, and that’s when I learned she had never emailed him and had only reached out to him once by text. So, it’s unclear what he’s talking about.

Wolff’s reputation has been sullied ever since the Epstein files were released. After all, he “embedded” himself with the pedophile for years. The Wall Street Journal described him as Epstein’s consigliere, The Guardian depicted the “blurred lines” Wolff had with getting his stories and the closeness he had to the guy, and Al-Jazeera did a deep dive into how ethical boundaries must be honored when obtaining information from sources, which he apparently crossed with the now-dead pedophile.

A batch of emails released in mid-November shows deep ties between the two men, with Wolff divvying out advice to Epstein. Al-Jazeera reports:

[T]he newly released emails also raise ethical questions about the role played by acclaimed author Michael Wolff as he appeared to provide advice to Epstein on how to handle his dealings with Trump.

In the exchanges published by the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, Wolff – best known for his bestselling books on the first Trump presidency – appeared to share confidential information before a presidential debate on CNN in December 2015 with Epstein, advising him on how to exploit his connection with Trump.

“I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you – either on air or in scrum afterwards,” Wolff wrote.

“If we were 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 PR and political currency,” Wolff told Epstein.

Yikes. This exchange doesn’t sound like there are journalistic boundaries between him and his subject. It sure sounds like Wolff is pretty cozy with the guy. As Politico notes on November 12, “The emails . . . show Wolff, despite his work as a journalist, taking on a role as an unofficial Epstein image consultant of sorts, offering him messaging and PR strategies as Epstein’s legal and criminal exposure began to mount.” PR strategies, you say? Talk about weird and creepy AF.

David A Graham also wrote in The Atlantic a piece on how Wolff’s defense of “ingratiating” himself with Epstein was not satisfactory on November 14.

So, the pile-on by the press was swift, as it should have been. What remains to be seen is if this heat continues and intensifies. What is shocking is how this guy floated with this shitbag for so long, and the question remains: Will these articles just stay in the “questioning” zone about his ethics and not dig into the fact that he spent an enormous amount of time with a fucking criminal who was a sex trafficking pedophile? We’ll have to see, won’t we? In my view, this guy needs to be hit much harder than we’ve seen so far. A lot harder. Only time will tell, and I’m not holding out much hope for it. But we’ll see.