Michael Wolff

Michael Wolff is a journalist, columnist and author best known for Fire and Fury and a series of subsequent books on the Trump White House and Fox News, and, most recently, for his own correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein disclosed by Congress in 2025.

Based in New York, NY Notable work Fire and Fury; The Fall Role Journalist & Author

Notable work and positions

Fire and Fury, Siege, Landslide & All or Nothing (Trump White House books) — Author
The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty — Author
New York magazine — former columnist (1998–2004)
Vanity Fair, USA Today, The Hollywood Reporter, British GQ, The Guardian — columnist and contributor
Newser — co-founder
Adweek — former editor

Biography

Michael Wolff was born August 27, 1953, in Paterson, New Jersey; his father worked in advertising and his mother was a newspaper reporter. He attended Columbia University in New York, working as a copy boy at The New York Times while a student. He published his first book, a collection of essays titled White Kids, in 1979. In the 1990s he ran his own early internet company, Wolff New Media, an experience that became the subject of his 1997 bestseller Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet.

Wolff built a career as a media columnist, writing for New York magazine, Vanity Fair, USA Today, The Hollywood Reporter, British GQ and the Guardian, and has received two National Magazine Awards and a Mirror Award for his commentary. In 2007 he co-founded the news aggregation website Newser, and in 2011 he briefly served as editor of Adweek before leaving after less than a year. In 2004 he published Autumn of the Moguls, an account of the media industry's decline, and in 2008 The Man Who Owns the News, a biography of Rupert Murdoch.

Wolff gained wide attention with Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, published in January 2018 after he was given access to observe White House staff during much of the first year of Donald Trump's presidency; the book became an international bestseller and was followed by Siege: Trump Under Fire (2019), Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency (2021) and All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America (2025). In September 2023 he published The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty, a New York Times bestseller about the Murdoch family and Fox News, released the same week Rupert Murdoch announced he would step down as chairman of Fox and News Corp. CNN's review of an advance copy of The Fall found factual errors, including misspelled names of Fox News anchors, and reported that Wolff had not attempted to fact-check the manuscript with Fox News or its parent company.

In November 2025, the Democratic staff of the U.S. House Oversight Committee released emails between Wolff and the late Jeffrey Epstein, including a 2019 message in which Epstein wrote that Trump “knew about the girls,” and a 2016 exchange in which Wolff asked Epstein about discussing Trump “in such a way that could garner you great sympathy.” Responding to the release, Wolff said in a video statement that he had corresponded with Epstein in an effort to get him to discuss his relationship with Trump, describing his own approach as “play-acting” that could, in hindsight, be seen as “embarrassing.” In February 2026, Trump said he was considering legal action against Wolff and Epstein's estate following the release of additional Epstein-related records by the Justice Department.

Career highlights

1. Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, 2018Became an international bestseller documenting the first year of the Trump administration; the first of what grew into a four-book series on the Trump presidency.

2. The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty, 2023A New York Times bestseller on the Murdoch family and Fox News, published the same week Rupert Murdoch announced his stepping-down as chairman; also drew CNN criticism for factual errors and a lack of fact-checking with Fox.

3. National Magazine Awards (x2) and a Mirror AwardRecognized for magazine columns written for outlets including New York magazine and Vanity Fair.

4. Epstein email correspondence disclosed, 2025–2026Emails between Wolff and Jeffrey Epstein discussing Donald Trump were released by the House Oversight Committee, prompting Wolff's on-record response and a threat of legal action from Trump.