Transcription
Leon Black is a titan of industry. He's worth an estimated 122.6 billion. The private equity firm he founded, Apollo, was described by Bloomberg as the apex predator of Wall Street. Black himself was described by Bloomberg as the most feared man in the most aggressive realm of finance. And he also paid Jeffrey Epstein $158 million between 2012 and 2018. Although actually he may have paid him $170 million between 2012 and 2018. We know he definitely paid the US Virgin Islands $62.5 million as part of a settlement in which he would not be prosecuted for any activities related to Jeffrey Epstein in 2023.
Now, I've been looking at every person in the Epstein files and ranking them on a scale from 1 to 10 in terms of how guilty I think they are, which is really a way of saying who should be prioritized in terms of who gets investigated. And Leon Black is the first 10 out of 10 that I have here. 10 out of 10, like investigate him yesterday. And the thing is, files that have been released somewhat recently suggest that the DOJ has actually been looking into Leon Black. There's a chance they still are. Notes from a conversation with a district attorney official in New York suggest that they don't doubt at least one of the allegations made against Leon Black. Specifically, one in which a person claims that when she was 16, she was by Leon Black. And yet, he's not in jail. He's just among us. And so one of the questions of course is why is it corruption? What did Leon Black pay Jeffrey Epstein 158 or 170 or more than that millions of dollars to do. So that is what we are going to talk about today.
Let's start at the beginning. Leon Black says he met Jeffrey Epstein in 1996 through a mutual Wall Street friend. And to hear Leon Black tell it, you know, they were just were just buddies. They were New York pals. They lived near each other. They would get breakfast. They would talk about philanthropy, talk about how to avoid taxes, you know, the usual.
Now, we know that they took a Vegas trip at one point with Woody Allen, which is just a who's who of don't bring your daughter around. They stayed at a a Caesar's Palace. I assume this was after Apollo, Leon Black's private equity firm, bought out Caesars, but before they had pushed it into bankruptcy. Leon was one of the signitories to Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday book. He wrote a little poem in which he said, "Blonde, red, brunette, spread out geographically with this net of fish. Jeff's now the old man in the sea." Of course, it's worth noting that Leon Black in more recent years has come out specifically to say he knew nothing about Epstein's behavior. He is shocked shocked to find out there's gambling going on in this casino. He said the payments he made to Epste were for legitimate professional advisory services and Black was completely unaware of Mr. Epstein's abhorrent misconduct that came to light in late 2018. Well, let's be honest. It did somewhat come to light in 2008, though I have said before I don't blame everybody who continued to have a relationship with Epstein after 2008 because the reality of Epstein's situation was unbelievably covered up. So many people did not understand what that situation really was. And I understand that.
Anyways, Black also said he did not engage in any wrongdoing or inappropriate conduct. Now, I have to say to that first part, the idea that payments that he made, the over $und00 million in payments he made were for legitimate professional advisory services, estate planning, tax, art structuring, etc. That's true. It's at least partially true. I've said it before, I'll say it a million times again. Epstein absolutely did legitimate work for people. This notion that it was like he was a high school dropout. How could he possibly have been giving advice these people found valuable? I don't know. He was he he was giving an extraordinary amount of advice. He was absolutely spending hours and hours and hours helping black handle trusts, giving him tax avoidance strategies essentially, etc. The second part's there. The black saying that he was completely unaware of Mr. Epste's abhorentt misconduct and he did not engage in any wrongdoing or inappropriate conduct. That's [ __ ] That is [ __ ] It is my personal belief that Leon Black absolutely knew what was going on. And in fact, it was a cornerstone of the bond he formed with Epstein. A cornerstone of the relationship of this very unique friendship.
So, let's go through this. I will say there is some graphicness here, so just be warned. The three cases that we really need to highlight, one including a minor, are three women who alleged that Leon Black them in 2002 in Epstein's New York townhouse, New York mansion, in the massage room, that they had been recruited by Galain. I think all three of them cited Galain as being the recruiter, though in some way or another were in contact with Epstein and Galain and were told to massage Leon Black who then all three women claim he bit them, bit them in a private area which led them to bleed, led to excruciating pain. At least two of the women had no prior knowledge of each other's accounts when they shared this. So, you have two women independent from one another saying that this man bit them. That's a very specific allegation to make in my opinion. If you're not telling the truth, that would be far too much of a coincidence in my opinion to have two women alleging this very specific thing happened to them independently of one another. The third girl, she's a woman now, but the third accuser who made the accusation, has diary entries in which she records that he bit her. And this is where you get notes from a conversation between the DA's office and the FBI. This is, I believe, the FBI taking notes on the conversation they're having with the New York District Attorney's Office. And it says this, District Attorney of New York, do not doubt her allegations against Jeffrey Epstein and Leon Black. That is the the person who alleges she was by Leon Black at 16 years old. The district attorney of New York does not doubt her allegations. They believe she was also abused by Staley. That's Jess Staley, the former head of Barclays, who is another 10 out of 10 in terms of I think the worst of being involved in Epstein's trafficking. But I have to look more into it. They say, but and here's the key. they say they have not found any independent corroboration. This gets us to what is so hard about these cases is that you're talking about that occurred in 2002 over two decades ago. I don't think this is simply a case of nobody in the in the DA's office, no prosecutor cares about this case. I do think it is complicated to find the corroborating evidence they would need to really bring these cases in the way that they would need to. I suppose, but I think we as the public should be demanding to know if the investigation, which there was one into Leon Black, if it is still active because I believe it absolutely should be.
Which brings us back to Jeffrey Epstein and the advice and the work he did for Leon and whether or not it is or is not connected to the trafficking that Epstein was doing. Leon Black paid Jeffrey Epstein $50 million in 2013, $70 million in 2014, $30 million in 2015, and just a a meager 8 million in 2017. Additionally, it's worth noting that the Senate Finance Committee chaired up, I believe, by Ron Widen, has subsequently came out and said that an additional $12 million in payments was paid by Black to Epstein in 2012, which is what brings the total up from just 158 million to 170 million. And by the way, on top of that, emails going back to like 2008, 2009 show that Epstein was getting stock advice and and stock tips from Leon Black. by the way at times when Leon Black had material non-public information. So they're certainly brushing up against insider trading issues there which were also things that profited Epstein. So I think the real value of this relationship for Epstein probably exceeded 200 million easily. And I can tell you this, it is provably the case that Epstein was not exclusively paid for taxes and estate planning purposes. And and here's the proof. In 2015, Leon Black was accused of by a woman named Guzelle. And he ultimately paid her well, he ultimately paid her $9.5 million, although he structured an agreement with her in which he would pay her $100,000 a month for 15 years, a total payout of $18 million in exchange for her signing an ironclad NDA, which she ultimately broke, which is how we know about all of this, and also why she only ultimately received $9.5 million as opposed to the full $18 million. You'll be unsurprised to hear that when all of that was going down, Leon Black turned to Jeffrey Epstein to help him with the situation. And one of the things that Epstein did was to email a Russian official, like an FSB trained economics guy in Moscow. And he says, "How are you? I need a favor. There is a Russian girl from Moscow. She's attempting to blackmail a group of powerful businessmen in New York. It is bad for business for everyone involved." Sergey gets back to him, doesn't look into it, follows up and says, "I'm talking to somebody who knows her. Can you give me more information?" And then it runs cold. They might have gotten on the phone. That seems to be what Epstein does is he'll only say so much over email. And then he gets on the phone. I don't know what comes of that. But three years later, Epstein is emailing Leon in one of his screeds in which he describes how frustrated he is by everything. And embedded within this long ranting email that he sends in 2018 is an email he had sent Leon in 2015 and then Epstein in 2018 continues on the email thread and says, "FYI, two months later, so two months after this email that I sent you in 2015, we were dealing on a daily basis with Guzelle issues and the transaction was put on the back burner." That is Jeffrey Epstein very very clearly saying that in 2015, a year where he was paid $30 million by Leon Black, he had been working on a transaction. had been working on a business deal for Leon Black to save him money, whatever the legitimate work that Leon said that Epstein did for him. And it was stopped because Epstein instead started to focus on emailing Russian officials to get dirt on women who accused Leon Black of
And there's one final woman here that's worth discussing. This is somebody who was introduced to black through Epstein, but who has not at least publicly alleged rape or or assault, but who was paid over $3 million by black over a series of number of years and seems to have brushed up against the IRS. And once again, Jeffrey Epstein steps in to save the day, for lack of a better term. Here is a raging email Epstein sent to Leon about this issue. Had I known from the beginning what I know now, I would never have gotten involved with Anna's issue. Never, ever. I have 40 years of experience dealing with the IRS, blah blah blah. Anna's situation is emblematic of my warnings and advice that it appears still continues to go unheated. I have repeatedly told you that these girls all want to show how clever they are. They come from countries where taxes are really paid and on top of that, they have no experience with real rules, money, or business. They often push the envelope beyond the pale, unfortunately, usually ending up getting the principal in serious trouble. Of course, Leon Black would be the principal in this case. For six months, I have asked you, her, and her gay bookkeeper, also such a boomer move. Why throw that in? If there was something I didn't know or wasn't being told, as I found this particular audit highly unusual, highly, I will review with you the ugly facts only on the phone. He goes on on and then another point. He says, "As of now, I do not have an easy timely solution to even propose. Reanna, a needle has to be carefully threaded between ugly alternatives. There are many considerations. putting the toothpaste back in the tube unlikely. Most not for email. Huh? Most of the solutions not for email. And then he says when he can talk, he can talk after four blah. So what happened? Well, Anna was set to be interviewed by I believe the IRS. In any case, it was tied to this IRS audit by the federal government and it was cancelled. That interview was canceled after it was scheduled. And we know very clearly that Epstein was the one who made that happen. Who protected Leon from whatever it was that Anna was going to be able to reveal that might get Leyon in trouble. We know this because Epstein later emailed who else? Brad Karp, a lawyer who's all over these files and says he has been kept safe. This is he's talking about Leon. Leon has been kept safe to date only as a result of my maniacal devotion to friends. Anna interview was canled after it was on the official request. He's saying I managed to pull off the impossible. I got this interview with her canceled even though it was already set in motion. So you now have two documented instances in which years where Epstein is being paid by black. He is doing work for black that is not strictly about estate planning or taxes. And of course this is just what we know. This is just what has been allowed to come out. What still exists after 30 years of a friendship. Epstein wrote at one point, "There is little I won't do for you, or at least try to do as a friend, and a great deal that I've already done, both known and some things that will need to remain unknown."
But here's where it gets really tricky. I believe Leon Black absolutely knew that Jeffrey Epste was a pedophile and that he traffked women and minors. I believe he participated in that on the basis of these allegations that we have. But I do not believe that he paid Epstein specifically for his trafficking network or to have women trafficked to him. I believe this was just a part of their friendship. This was something they bonded over. It was part of why they were so close, why they had a unique friendship, as Epstein called it. And yet there is a question in my mind of if you know that somebody is trafficking minors and then you pay them 158 million $170 million even if it's for separate work. Is that not prosecutable? I think the answer actually might be no. If you pay somebody and you know they're a drug dealer on the side, but you pay them to deliver your pizza, you're not held accountable for paying somebody who's doing criminal activity in a separate realm. But this isn't paying your pizza delivery guy while he's dealing drugs to your neighbor. This is somebody who paid so much money to Epstein that he was able to afford a private island which the US Virgin Islands in their own case against both these men allege Epstein had to increase isolation and impede escape or observation. So this is our final piece of this which is the settlement with the US Virgin Islands and Leon Black. their assertion, the US Virgin Islands assertion is that Jeffrey Epstein was running like an organized sex trafficking ring out of the US Virgin Islands. They settled with Epstein's estate, so it never went to court and discovery and all these things. They settled with the estate in 2021 for $105 million plus the US Virgin Islands would get half the proceeds from the sale of of Epstein's Islands. And they alleged that Leon Black's money is what financed it. And the thing is they're not wrong. So does it matter that he wasn't paying him specifically for that purpose? That he was probably paying him for other things other things which by the way as we discussed included payouts to women and things around women and all these things but not directly trafficking at a minimum. The public deserves to know if the investigation against Black is ongoing and if it's not, why it has been dropped, why they believe that they cannot possibly find enough evidence to at least indict him, at least initiate a proceeding. I am a believer in innocent until proven guilty. Right now, these are all allegations, but I am also very entitled to my opinion, which is that these allegations are remarkably similar to be coincidental and that the nature of this very close friendship over so many years leaves it impossible for me to believe that Leon did not know what was going