If Morality Had Bankruptcy Lawyers: Michael Wolff, Mike Solana, and the Age of Ethical Insolvency

The Marketization of Conscience in an Age Without Shame

If morality had bankruptcy lawyers, this would be their heyday.

The entire profession would be drowning in Chapter 11 filings from people whose ethical obligations have exceeded their capacity to perform them. Michael Wolff would be first in line, frantically reorganizing his remaining credibility under court supervision while his reputation’s creditors—truth, decency, basic human dignity—hammer at the courthouse doors demanding payment they’ll never receive.

The emails are out now. Twenty thousand pages from Jeffrey Epstein’s files, and there’s Wolff, writing to a child sex trafficker on October 29, 2016: “There’s an opportunity to come forward this week and talk about Trump in such a way that could garner you great sympathy and help finish him. Interested?”

One must pause to reflect upon the moral vacuum this represents. A journalist—someone who built a career selling books about Trump, presenting himself as the insider who knew the real story—was coordinating with Jeffrey Epstein about strategic timing for releasing dirt on Trump. Not reporting what he knew. Not investigating. Coordinating. With a pedophile. About when to deploy information for maximum political impact.

The 2015 exchange reveals the full architecture of this corruption. When CNN planned to ask Trump about his relationship with Epstein, Wolff tipped off the sex trafficker. Then helped him strategize: “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 valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt.”

This is a journalist advising a child sex trafficker on how to leverage information about a presidential candidate for personal gain. Gaming out scenarios where Epstein could “save” Trump to “generate a debt” or let him “hang himself” for “PR and political currency.” This isn’t journalism. This isn’t even corruption of journalism. This is something beyond category—the complete moral vacancy that comes from treating everything, including child rape, as raw material for insider access and book deals.

Meanwhile, Mike Solana’s writer Riley Nork—one of his prostrators to power—mocks Stone and Parker for admitting they’ve received no management pressure over their creative freedom. “Censor me harder daddy,” Nork sneers, as if the real story here is cartoon creators’ supposed disappointment that their penis jokes about Trump face no consequences. Solana celebrates this analysis, treating the absence of authoritarian crackdown as evidence that Stone and Parker secretly crave victimhood rather than as basic normalcy finally restored.

This is the moral universe they inhabit: where the absence of authoritarian crackdown on satire becomes evidence that the satirists are disappointed, where billionaire media owners letting comedians do their jobs represents some kind of gotcha moment, and where emails showing a journalist coordinating with a child sex trafficker about strategic information deployment get filed under partisan hackery not worth serious attention.

One must imagine how uncomfortable this is for Peter Thiel. His investment in respectability—the Stanford degrees, the philosophical frameworks, the neo-reactionary intellectual infrastructure—all of it suddenly tethered to emails showing his political movement’s standard-bearer coordinating with a child sex trafficker. Steve Bannon, at least, understands what’s actually at stake. He’s warning MAGA to “brace for prison” if Democrats keep winning. Not because Democrats are authoritarian, but because Bannon knows exactly what he and his allies have done. He knows the emails exist. He knows the coordination happened. He knows that “prison” isn’t hypothetical persecution but actual accountability for actual crimes.

This is the confession dressed as warning. Bannon isn’t afraid of tyranny—he’s afraid of prosecution. He’s not predicting authoritarian overreach—he’s recognizing that what they’ve done requires either permanent power or permanent consequences. The panic isn’t about Democrats weaponizing justice. It’s about Democrats using justice.

Which makes Solana’s performance even more pathetic. While Bannon tells his coalition to prepare for prison if they lose power—a remarkable admission that maintaining power is the only thing standing between them and legal accountability—Solana’s writer is mocking cartoon creators for not being censored. This is the sophisticated cover Peter Thiel’s money bought: a vice president at Founders Fund employing writers so committed to performing as free speech defenders that they celebrate oligarchs doing the bare minimum while his patron’s entire political project implodes in real time.

Wolff made millions writing Fire and Fury and its sequels. Books that presented him as the brave truth-teller, the insider who saw what others missed, the journalist with access no one else had. He sold that access as virtue. He sold those books as courage. And the entire time he was coordinating with Jeffrey Epstein—whose “friendship” with Trump he was supposedly exposing—about when to deploy information for maximum impact.

The 2019 email completes the picture. Epstein writing to Wolff: “[VICTIM] mara lago. [REDACTED]. trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever. Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”

Epstein is telling Wolff about Trump knowing about “the girls.” About Mar-a-Lago. About Maxwell. And Wolff—who would later write books presenting himself as the fearless investigator—sat on it. Coordinated with Epstein about it. Treated it as currency to be deployed strategically rather than a crime to be reported immediately.

There is no bankruptcy proceeding that restructures this debt. There is no legal mechanism that discharges these obligations. Wolff traded in information about child sex trafficking like it was political opposition research. He coordinated timing with a pedophile like he was running a campaign. He treated “the girls” as a strategic assets to be leveraged for access and profit.

And he sold books presenting himself as the truth-teller while doing it.

The moral insolvency isn’t just Wolff’s personal failure. It’s systemic. He got rich off this. Publishers made money. Readers made him a bestseller. The entire apparatus of American media and publishing rewarded someone who was actively coordinating with a child sex trafficker while presenting himself as the fearless investigator exposing Trump’s corruption.

The complete moral collapse happens when access becomes everything and truth becomes nothing. When insider status matters more than what you do with what you learn. When being “in the room” becomes more important than what happens in that room or who else is there. When sophisticated cretins employ writers who convince themselves that mocking satirists for not being censored represents principled commentary, while actual coordination between journalists and child sex traffickers merits dismissal as noise unworthy of serious attention.

Wolff wasn’t ignorant. He wasn’t duped. He wasn’t caught in an impossible situation requiring difficult choices. He was coordinating. Strategizing. Gaming out scenarios where a child sex trafficker could leverage information about a presidential candidate for personal benefit. And then he wrote books selling himself as the brave insider who knew the real story.

The real story is that he knew. He coordinated with Epstein about it. He treated information about child sex trafficking as a strategic asset to be deployed for maximum impact. He got rich presenting himself as truth-teller while hoarding truth for personal gain. And somewhere, somehow, he convinced himself this was journalism rather than participation in covering up crimes against children.

There are no bankruptcy lawyers skilled enough to reorganize these moral debts. There is no court that restructures obligations this profound. There is no legal mechanism that discharges complicity this complete.

Wolff’s credibility isn’t just bankrupt—it never existed. What we mistook for moral capital was always fraudulent accounting. The books weren’t truth-telling but strategic deployment of information hoarded while coordinating with a pedophile about timing. The insider access wasn’t journalistic achievement but collaboration with a child sex trafficker.

The worst part is that Wolff almost certainly still thinks of himself as the truth-teller. Still believes he was doing journalism. Still imagines his books were courageous rather than opportunistic deployment of information he coordinated with Jeffrey Epstein about when to reveal.

Just as Solana still thinks he’s defending free speech by employing writers who mock cartoon creators for admitting they face no censorship—as if the absence of authoritarian pressure proves satirists secretly crave victimhood rather than proving the system isn’t yet fully authoritarian. When your moral priorities place sneering at artists for not being censored above addressing actual coordination between journalists and child sex traffickers, you’ve achieved a perfect inversion: performing as free speech warrior while serving as cover for those who’d prefer certain truths remain strategic currency rather than public knowledge.

The moral insolvency isn’t a temporary state requiring reorganization. It’s a permanent condition. And the only honest accounting is this: Michael Wolff built a career and fortune coordinating with a child sex trafficker about how to leverage information for personal gain, then sold books presenting himself as the fearless investigator exposing Trump’s corruption. While Mike Solana built a career providing sophisticated cover for oligarchic power consolidation while convinced he’s defending liberty.

There are no lawyers who can restructure that. There is no bankruptcy proceeding that discharges these debts. There is only the permanent record of emails showing exactly what Wolff was doing while presenting himself as something else entirely. And the permanent record of posts showing exactly what others have been doing while imagining they’re something else entirely.

If morality had bankruptcy lawyers, Wolff’s case would be the landmark precedent for obligations so profound that no reorganization is possible. For debts so absolute that discharge is unthinkable. For insolvency so complete that the only honest statement is this: the moral account was always empty, and what we mistook for capital was fraud all along.

---

Go Deeper into the Circus

---