Trump worked to kill a story about his friendship with Epstein. Now we know why

‘There’s another element – and a brutal one for the president. It’s where the story was published: in the Wall Street Journal.’ Photograph: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

For days before the Wall Street Journal published its story about Donald Trump’s salacious friendship with Jeffrey Epstein on Thursday, the president was frantically working the phones.

He reportedly put pressure on the paper’s top editor, Emma Tucker, and even Rupert Murdoch, who controls the paper’s business side, claiming that the alleged facts behind the story were nothing but a hoax, and threatening to sue the paper if it forged ahead. (Following publication of this article, Trump filed a suit against the paper and Murdoch.)