Latest / The Vault: The Epstein Files / Mega Edition: The New York Times Exposes The Relationship Between Leon Black And Epstein (5/23/26)

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Mega Edition: The New York Times Exposes The Relationship Between Leon Black And Epstein (5/23/26) · The Vault: The Epstein Files

0:00
Speaker 1: What's up, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the
0:03
Epstein Chronicles. Jeffrey Epstein had relationships with a lot of
0:08
powerful people, and one of the most powerful people, at
0:13
least financially speaking, was Apollo Global founder Leon Black. And
0:19
if you've been listening to this podcast for any amount
0:22
of time, then that's the name that you're already familiar with.
0:26
And as you all know, we've been talking about Leon
0:28
Black since the beginning, and that's because he's a very
0:32
important person in this story. Without Leon Black, Jeffrey Epstein
0:37
doesn't have anywhere near the capitol that he ended up with.
0:40
And not only that, but after he helped Leon Black out,
0:44
he owned Leon Black for all intents and purposes. Once
0:47
you have something to hold over someone's head, especially when
0:50
you're someone like Jeffrey Epstein, at some point you're going
0:53
to catch those chips in and look to get some
0:55
currency out of it, right, And that most certainly is
0:59
what Jeffrey Epstein did throughout his relationship with Leon Black.
1:03
And in today's episode, we're going to keep that conversation
1:06
going by diving into this massive article that was published
1:10
by The New York Times and sent to me by
1:13
one of the managers of the newsroom. So with that said,
1:17
why don't we just dive into this article and see
1:19
what they have for us? Like I said. This article
1:22
was published by The New York Times and the headline
1:25
how Epstein helped solve a billionaire's problems with women. The
1:29
Wall Street Titan. Leon Black paid Jeffrey Epstein one hundred
1:33
and seventy million for what he said was tax at
1:36
a state work, but his services went beyond that. This
1:40
article was authored by Matthew Goldstein, Jessica Silver Greenberg, Steve Eder,
1:46
and David Enrich. In October of twenty seventeen, a yoga
1:52
instructor email Jeffrey Epstein with a delicate question, when might
1:57
she receive the tens of thousands of dollars he'd been
2:00
promised by the billionaire Leon Black. So, right off the cuff,
2:05
why would she be asking Jeffrey Epstein of how money
2:08
from Leon Black? I'm sure it has nothing to do
2:11
with the fact that Epstein's the one that facilitated the
2:13
whole entire thing, right right. She and mister Black had
2:18
been in a sexual relationship and since at least two
2:21
thousand and nine, hundreds of thousands of dollars had flowed
2:24
to her from mister Black's bank accounts, but in twenty
2:28
seventeen the setup changed. Now mister Epstein would wire the money,
2:32
in this case one hundred thousand dollars. So right away
2:35
you see that Leon Black has been telling lies. Oh,
2:39
it was all about tax advice. It was about this,
2:42
It was about that we were trading recipes for a zodo.
2:46
No you weren't. You were using Jeffrey Epstein as a middleman,
2:51
as a fixer, and as a tool in your toolbox
2:55
to make things go away. Why can't you just be
2:58
honest about it, Leon Black and keep all of this
3:00
in mind when you have people out here crying about
3:03
the reputations of people like Leon Black. This man has
3:07
had every chance in the world to explain himself, explain
3:10
his relationship with Ebstein and what he was doing, given
3:14
the dude so much money, and at every single turn
3:17
he's chosen to lie instead of being honest. And when
3:21
it comes to Ebstein, I don't think any of these
3:23
people have an honest bone in their body. He said that.
3:27
Now he does it through you. The woman wrote to
3:29
mister Ebstein in an email that the Justice Department released
3:33
this year, mister Ebstein wrote back confirming the arrangement. So,
3:37
right then and there, what was he doing involved with
3:40
this transaction? I thought he was only giving you tax advice,
3:46
and I thought that you and Jeffrey Ebstein weren't close
3:49
at all. Oh that was a lie. Can someone explain
3:56
to me how anyone thinks it's a good idea to
3:58
have Leon Black's son as part of the administration. You
4:02
would think that with everything going on, that would not
4:05
be the move. Then again, though, you have an administration
4:09
where the guy at the top was very close to
4:12
Jeffrey Epstein as well. So to this administration, it doesn't
4:16
even matter. They've moved on already. And unfortunately, considering the
4:20
stakes when it comes to a war, a lot of
4:22
people have moved on as well. And that's the nature
4:26
of a story like this. It's so complex, it's so
4:30
interwoven that you're not going to get the pay dirt
4:33
in a couple of days, a couple of weeks, hell,
4:35
a couple of years. You got to be in this
4:38
one for the long haul. And there's a reason why
4:40
we do this every single day the way we do,
4:43
because if you miss even a day, you're going to
4:46
be behind the eight ball. The story moves so quickly
4:49
and stuff gets buried so quickly that if you're not
4:52
on top of it, forget it. And don't think for
4:54
a minute that the DOJ and the administration doesn't know
4:57
that they most certainly do. For every minute that you're
5:01
talking about what's going on in Iran, that's one last
5:04
minute you're scrutinizing what went down with the Epstein files
5:08
and the cover up at large. And as much as
5:12
I detest it, the strategy's working pretty well for the administration.
5:17
A lot of people have taken the bait, and when
5:21
it comes to engagement and driving clicks, that's what most
5:24
people are looking for. And I get it right, I'm
5:27
not knocking people. If they want to cover whatever they
5:29
want to cover, I get it. But for me, I
5:32
don't care if there's an alien invasion. This is the
5:34
story that we're going to continue to talk about no
5:37
matter what. And I think that if you're still here,
5:40
following along with the story as we speak, then you're
5:43
not going to be thrown off the task either. So
5:45
a fat shout out to everybody that is staying on
5:48
target and not being thrown off. Now, look, That doesn't mean,
5:53
by the way, that you shouldn't be concerned about what's
5:55
going on in other stories. You should be. But this story,
6:00
as far as I'm concerned, is still the most important
6:03
story out there. And that's because it reaches and touches
6:08
just about every part of our lives. Whether it's financial,
6:11
whether it's politics, whether it's academia. Every single layer has
6:17
been penetrated, and nobody has been held accountable, And as
6:22
far as I'm concerned, that is completely unacceptable. So I'm
6:26
going to continue using whatever little platform I have to
6:29
keep the flags of discontent waving, right, somebody has to
6:32
do it. In the later years of mister Epstein's life,
6:39
he was incarcerated and registered as a sex offender. No
6:42
one did more to bankroll his opulent lifestyle than mister
6:46
Black seventy four, a towering figure on Wall Street and
6:50
a fixture of the global art scene. Well, is it
6:54
because he really loves art? Or is it because he
6:57
wants to launder money using art? Guess is he wants
7:00
to longer money. I mean, that's pretty much always the goal, right,
7:04
reaching their grubby hands across the board and taking more.
7:08
Mister Black paid Epstein one hundred and seventy million over
7:11
six years for what mister Black said were tax and
7:14
estate planning services. The sum dwarfed what elite law or
7:19
accounting firms would have charged for similar work, baffling both
7:22
as Wall Street peers and investigators on Capitol Hill. It's
7:27
not baffling, not when you peel back the layers and
7:30
you start looking at it. It was obvious that Leon
7:33
Black was paying for something else. And now we know
7:36
for sure what else he was paying for, not just
7:39
tax advice, at the very least, help with women, whether
7:44
that's fixing a situation that's when south, or whether that's
7:48
hooking them up with a woman, whatever it might be.
7:51
It's obvious that a lot more was going on here
7:53
than tax planning. And look, even before we had these emails,
7:57
we knew, we knew that this dude wasn't just helping
7:59
with tax planning. It was rather obvious to anybody with
8:03
a brain in their head. The millions of pages of
8:07
Epstein related emails and other documents that the Justice Department
8:11
released this year offer a potential explanation for the size
8:15
of the payments. Mister Epstein essentially served as a fixer
8:19
whose services went beyond modernizing mister Black's finances or reducing
8:24
his taxes. According to a New York Times review of
8:27
those records, well, I appreciate the New York Times checking
8:31
our work, but we came to this conclusion a very
8:35
long time ago. There was nothing else that it could
8:38
have been right. There was nothing else. Epstein obviously was
8:42
doing a lot more than just tax planning or giving
8:46
advice about finances. And anybody who knows anything about Wall
8:50
Street knows that the guy who's running Apollo Global doesn't
8:54
need financial advice from a guy like Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein
8:58
suggested ways to obscure there millions of dollars that mister
9:01
Black paid to women as well as mister Epstein himself.
9:05
He brainstormed about how to avoid taxes on some of
9:09
the payments. He took credit for defusing a government audit
9:12
of a woman whom mister Black had paid millions of dollars.
9:16
He planned ways to surveil, intimidate, and silence another woman
9:20
who was threatening to publicly accuse mister Black of abuse.
9:25
He even counseled mister Black to separate from his wife
9:28
after she learned of his infidelity. You know, I have
9:32
been contacted by multiple people who have said that they've
9:36
been intimidated by people working for Leon Black, multiple people,
9:42
and they do it in a way that is not illegal.
9:46
So what they'll do is they'll hire a private investigator
9:49
to skirt all the bullshit right, and then later on
9:52
down the road, if they're accused of intimidation, they'll just
9:55
be like, I had a private investigator who's licensed, and
9:58
all they were doing was asking questions. And that's how
10:01
they get around that shit. It's not like they're sending,
10:04
you know, a thug from the local gang to come
10:07
and shake you down. That's not what they're doing. They'll
10:12
tiptoe to the very edge of the law, the very
10:14
line of it, and then they'll straddle that. And that's
10:19
what we see from people like Leon Black all the time.
10:21
When you have that kind of money, that kind of power,
10:24
you're going to utilize it to try and intimidate people
10:27
if they have bad things to say about you, and
10:29
a guy like Leon Black has perfected the art. Mister
10:33
Black paid about twenty million to a dozen women, at
10:36
least some of whom he'd had sexual relationships with, according
10:40
to the recently released files and notes, taken by congressional
10:44
investigators and shared with the Times. Epstein was involved in
10:49
figuring out ways to dispense a significant portion of that money. Yeah,
10:55
you know, just a regular guy helping with tax advice.
10:58
Nothing to see here, No financial crimes were committed, nobody
11:04
was hurt. Leon Black's is just an aw shucks kind
11:07
of fella and he just happened to become mega rich
11:10
over at Apollo Global by throwing darts at a dartboard
11:15
and figuring out what to invest in. That's basically what
11:18
they're saying, right, Leon Black, He's stupid, He's not really
11:21
that smart, and he fell into all of this by luck.
11:27
I mean, what's the alternative that he went in with
11:29
eyes wide open and knew exactly what he was doing. Well,
11:33
that's what I think happened. He'll tell you differently, but
11:36
that's what I think happened. I don't believe for a
11:38
minute that he was duped by Jeffrey Epstein. Mister Epstein
11:44
summed it up to mister Black in a twenty seventeen email.
11:47
Mister Epstein's job, as he saw it, was partly about
11:50
saving you from yourself. In a statement, mister Black's lawyers
11:55
Courtney Forrest and Susan Strich said, the Justice Department documents
11:59
may clear that mister Epstein embellished, exaggerated, and lied about
12:04
mister Black. And it's convenient, right everybody wants to say
12:10
that the relationship with Epstein was just a big lie,
12:13
and with Epstein being dead, pretty convenient for them to
12:16
take that approach. Who's going to deny it? Well, the
12:21
documents deny it, and even in the face of documentation,
12:25
these people continue to double down on their bullshit lies.
12:28
The recently released documents, which include some of mister Black's
12:32
financial records, have intensified congressional scrutiny of his relationship with
12:37
mister Epstein and whether it crossed ethical or legal boundaries.
12:43
Is there any doubt that it at the very least
12:46
crossed ethical boundaries? And that's giving them the benefit of
12:49
the doubt, which we should even do, by the way,
12:52
but let's just give them the benefit of the doubt.
12:55
Does anyone out there really think this didn't cross ethical boundaries?
12:59
I mean maybe if you have Bill Cosby as the
13:01
head of ethics for your company, things are cool. But
13:04
short of that, I'm guessing HR is going to want
13:07
to have a word with you. The House Oversight Committee
13:10
recently asked mister Black to sit for an interview. Senator
13:13
Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, who has been investigating mister
13:17
Black's financial ties to mister Abstein for years, accused him
13:21
in a letter last week of seemingly using mister Ebstein
13:25
to hide payments to women. He also questioned whether mister
13:28
Black had complied with tax laws. Now, mister Widen might
13:33
have himself a bit of a problem considering his own
13:36
son in twenty sixteen look to get money from Jeffrey Epstein.
13:41
Now we're going to have an episode about that coming up.
13:44
But when I tell you that this is an all
13:45
sides problem, that's what I mean. There's plenty of blame
13:50
to go around here, and all the people that are
13:52
pointing fingers don't even want to clean up their own
13:55
living room. In an interview, mister Widen said that he
13:58
had never believed that mister Black paid mister Epstein one
14:01
hundred and seventy millions solely for a state and tax advice.
14:05
I think this all comes down to hush money, he said,
14:08
as well as mister Epstein doing the kinds of things
14:11
that would keep mister Black ahead of the law. Yes,
14:14
one hundred percent. That is exactly what went down, and
14:18
that's exactly what Epstein's role was and function was when
14:21
it comes to Leon Black. Miss Astrich said that Wyden's
14:25
claims were outrageous and false and were meant to serve
14:28
his own selfish political interest. She accused him of leaking
14:32
mister Black's confidential financial information and trying to distract from
14:36
the fact that mister Widen's son, a hedge fund manager,
14:40
sought an investment from mister Epstein in twenty sixteen. Mister
14:44
Widen said his son's presence in the Epstein documents would
14:48
not change the course of his investigation. Well, you better
14:52
believe it won't, because your son is on the clock,
14:58
just like everybody else who's involved than this shit. The
15:01
same way I yell and scream about Ben Black, Leon
15:04
Black's son, I feel the same way about mister Widen's kid,
15:08
because look, folks, this transcends politics. It's not right versus
15:14
left at this point, it's good versus evil and that's
15:19
not even hyperbole. Right. These people that would lord over
15:22
us are truly evil. In my opinion. All you have
15:27
to do is take a Look at the way they
15:28
talk about us in those emails, and it's not just
15:32
talk obviously, Look how they put it into action. And
15:35
when it comes to a guy like Leon Black, is
15:38
there any doubt that at the very least these two
15:40
idiots were stealing money hand over fist. Is there any
15:44
doubt about that, laundering money, evading taxes, paying hush money.
15:49
The list goes on and on. So his lawyers can
15:53
say whatever they want, and they can act like he
15:56
was just dupe by Jeffrey Epstein, like the rest of
15:59
these people are saying, but it doesn't really hit and
16:02
I think that narrative is certainly played out, especially when
16:06
we're talking about Jeffrey Epstein. All right, folks, we're gonna
16:10
wrap up episode one right here, and in the next episode,
16:13
we're gonna pick up with this article where we left off.
16:16
All the information that goes with this episode can be
16:19
found in the description box. What's up, everyone, and welcome
16:23
to another episode of the Epstein Chronicles. In this episode,
16:27
we're gonna pick right back up where we left off
16:30
with the New York Times article talking about Leon Black
16:34
and Jeffrey Epstein. This article was authored by Matthew Goldstein.
16:38
Jessica Silver Greenberg, Steve Eater, and David Enrich. Mister Epstein
16:45
and mister Black first met in the mid nineties, not
16:48
long after mister Black co founded the private equity firm
16:51
Apollo Global Management. The two became friends. Mister Black and
16:56
his wife, Deborah named mister Epstein to the board of
16:59
their family foundation. In two thousand and three, mister Black
17:03
was among the contributors to a book celebrating mister Epstein's
17:07
fiftieth birthday, signing his entry love and Kisses and That's
17:12
the birthday book, of course, that also included the alleged
17:16
card or letter from Donald Trump. Now, Donald Trump says
17:20
it's not real, but when you look at it, it
17:23
sure looks real to me. And considering that Congress now
17:28
has that book, what do you think the chances are
17:31
that Donald Trump is telling us a lie. I think
17:34
the chances are pretty good. Considering all the other lies
17:40
that Donald Trump has told us about Jeffrey Epstein in
17:42
his relationship with him, I'd say that the chances are
17:46
good that he lied about that letter as well. Six
17:52
years later, when mister Epstein was released from jail after
17:55
serving time for soliciting, prostitution from a minor. Mister Black
17:59
was he to celebrate. An assistant informed mister Epstein that
18:03
mister Black wanted to sing them happy days are here again.
18:08
Oh my good buddy, Jeffrey gets out of jail for
18:11
molesting a kid, and I want to sing him happy
18:14
days are here again. What sort of disgusting, degenerate bastard
18:21
wants to do that? Oh that's right, Leon Black, that's who.
18:26
If I have to listen, I'd rather be in jail,
18:28
mister Epstein replied. On several occasions, mister Abstein introduced mister
18:33
Black to women. According to emails and investigative records released
18:38
by the Justice Department, as well as interviews with lawyers
18:42
involved in the Epstein cases, at least three women later
18:47
accused mister Black of rape or sexual assault, allegations that
18:51
he has denied. Mister Black has never abused, assaulted, or
18:55
raped any girl or woman, and the idea of doing
18:58
so is repulsive and reprehensible to him. His lawyers said, well,
19:03
I would hope so, but I don't know if I
19:06
believe that. I mean, there's some serious allegations that have
19:10
been made against Leon Black, and not one of those
19:15
cases has ever went to trial, hell, not even to discovery.
19:19
Keep in mind, this is the same guy that paid
19:21
what sixty two and a half million dollars to get
19:24
himself out of trouble down in the US Virgin Islands.
19:28
So we're talking about a guy that will go to
19:30
gray at length to keep his name out of this story.
19:35
The only problem for him is his name is Smack
19:38
dab in the middle of it. And anybody who's serious
19:41
about investigating what happened here knows that the Manhattan District
19:48
Attorney's office briefly investigated sexual assault allegations against him. No
19:52
charges were filed. The US Virgin Islands conducted a civil
19:56
investigation of mister Black's relationship with that Epstein and several women.
20:02
Mister Black paid a sixty two million dollar settlement with
20:05
the territory before it made any public accusations. And this
20:09
is a big problem with the USVII. They talked a
20:12
big ass game about caring about survivors and people who
20:16
were abused, and then they raked in over two hundred
20:20
million dollars and not one single dollar of that was
20:23
distributed to survivors or people who were hurt. So, for
20:28
all intents, and purposes. The USVII ate at both ends
20:32
of the table. When Epstein was alive, they were enjoying
20:36
a large ass, they were in bed with him, they
20:39
were getting a bunch of dough from him. And then
20:41
when he died, they had the audacity to sue people
20:44
that were connected to him. They had the audacity to
20:47
sue the estate and literally take money from the survivors themselves.
20:53
Completely unacceptable. And I remember at the time calling it
20:57
out and people saying to me, well, the USVI is
21:00
doing something, yeah, enriching themselves. You know who got back
21:06
burnered like usual, the survivors, that's who. Meanwhile people like
21:10
Leon Black get to just scurry off into the night.
21:15
By twenty twelve, the friendship between the two men had
21:19
also become a business relationship. Mister Black, who was at
21:23
the time where three point four billion, was dealing with
21:26
some complex tax issues. That year, mister Epstein helped devise
21:30
a way to restructure a trust and save mister Black
21:34
hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes. While it's unclear
21:38
to what degree the idea originated with mister Abstein or
21:42
mister Black's other advisors, it cemented mister Ebstein's value. In
21:46
his eyes, it was all Epstein, not his other advisors.
21:51
You don't bring somebody on board and pay him the
21:53
money that you're paying them if you're going to lean
21:55
on your other advisors, that's stupid. He brought Epstein in
22:01
because Epstein offered him something that his other advisors couldn't
22:04
or wouldn't A little walk on the wild side, if
22:08
you get my drift. A law firm that Apollo hired
22:12
to review the Black Epstein relationship later characterized mister Epstein's
22:16
work on the trust as the most important service that
22:19
he provided to mister Black. He stepped down from Apollo
22:23
in twenty twenty one. The law firm Deckert concluded that
22:27
mister Epstein's tax and estate planning services had been legitimate
22:32
and vetted contemporaneously by well qualified lawyers. Why didn't those
22:36
lawyers just take care of the taxes in the first place.
22:41
Why did they have to check Jeffrey Epstein's work If
22:44
Epstein was so great, but other assignments that were not
22:49
mentioned in Deckert's twenty twenty one report had been much
22:52
more sensitive. And that's the thing with these reports, these
22:55
internal reports. I don't trust them. Ever have an outside
23:00
company come in and take a look at what we
23:02
have going on. Who's paying that company? Oh, that's right,
23:05
you are. So do you think they're not going to
23:08
play ball and only dig deep enough to find surface
23:11
issues or what you want them to find. Because if
23:14
you think they're going to go deep like an independent investigation,
23:18
you have not been paying attention. That's not how these
23:21
investigations work. Unfortunately. Instead, what we have most times is
23:25
a whitewash. Oh, let me bring in this friendly company,
23:28
this friendly law firm, this white chee law firm, and
23:31
they'll come up with this narrative that makes our investors
23:34
more at ease. That's all it's about. It's not about
23:37
finding out what really happened or holding anyone accountable. For years,
23:44
mister Black had been paying women, some of them hundreds
23:46
of thousands of dollars annually, according to the Justice Departments
23:50
Epstein documents, court filings, mister Widen's letter, and two of
23:54
the lawyers involved in the Epstein cases. For tax purposes,
23:59
mister Black classified many of the payments as gifts. The
24:03
recipient of a gift generally does not need to pay
24:06
taxes on it. The giver does not need to pay
24:10
taxes either until those lifetime giving exceeds a certain amount.
24:15
The threshold varies by year, but in twenty twelve the
24:18
limit was about five million, and mister Black had surpassed it.
24:22
Email show that meant he would have to start paying
24:26
a forty percent tax on any large gifts. Oh, we
24:29
can't have that. You want to send somebody like Leon
24:33
Black into orbit? Tell him he has to pay taxes
24:36
forget it. These dudes spend I would say a significant
24:42
amount of their time looking for ways to park their
24:44
money in places that they never have to pay taxes
24:47
on it. It's like a pastime for these people. Mister
24:51
Epstein suggested that because at least some of the gifts
24:54
had come from a bank account that mister Black held
24:57
jointly with his wife, perhaps half could be a tributed
25:00
to her for tax purposes. That would increase mister Black's
25:04
capacity to make tax free gifts. Just another way to
25:08
try and gain the system. How many of you out
25:13
there are gifting people money to avoid taxes? Hell, maybe
25:17
we should be. Maybe everybody should jump on this train.
25:20
They want to put these loopholes in for rich people.
25:23
Maybe we should exploit them too. Imagine showing up to
25:27
H and R Block and being like, Hey, I want
25:29
the Leon Black treatment. I want you to do for
25:32
me what Jeffrey Epstein did for Leon Black. I wonder
25:35
how that would go over. But the question was not
25:39
only how much mister Black might owe in taxes. It
25:42
was also that he and the women would have to
25:44
disclose to the Internal Revenue Service. If the payments were
25:48
not gifts, the women would need to report the money
25:51
as income on their tax returns. If the payments were gifts,
25:55
mister Black would have to disclose them on a gift
25:58
tax return. None of that happened. And this is what
26:01
I'm telling you about taxes at the very least. I
26:04
know it's not the fancy charges everybody wants, but if
26:09
it's good enough for al Capone, it's good enough for
26:11
these comebags. A rule of thumb for the ultra wealthy
26:14
is to limit unnecessary paper trails, which create opportunities for misunderstanding,
26:19
audit risk and reputational exposure, said Victoria J. Hanneman, a
26:25
professor at the University of Georgia's School of Law who
26:28
specializes in taxes and estates. Now, imagine being Leon Black
26:32
and going to somebody like Epstein instead of this lady.
26:35
You mean to tell me that Victoria Hanneman doesn't know
26:39
as much about taxes as Epstein. Well, we know that's bs.
26:42
And the reason that he went to somebody like Epstein
26:45
is because he knew that Epstein wasn't scared to color
26:48
out of the lines. And that's exactly what Leon Black
26:51
was looking for, somebody that would play ball. In late
26:56
twenty twelve, mister Epstein and mister Black's other advisors discussed
27:00
mister Black could donate money to a family trust, and
27:04
the trust could then make additional gifts. Mister Black would
27:07
still owe taxes, but payments would no longer come directly
27:11
from him. There are so many different layers to the
27:14
tax system and so many ways to game it that
27:18
it's disgusting. People like Leon Black have turned this shit
27:24
into an art form, and nobody was better at it
27:28
than Jeffrey Epstein. Going forward, his payments to at least
27:32
some women came from several trusts that he controlled. Emails
27:35
and financial documents show. Mister Black's lawyers said that all
27:40
of his payments to women and gift taxes were vetted
27:43
and approved by legal and accounting experts. They added, evidence
27:47
that communications were sent to mister Black is not evidence
27:51
that he read, agreed with, or followed advice in those messages. No,
27:55
not at all. How about one hundred and fifty eight
27:59
million dollars, though that might be a clue, that might
28:01
be some evidence. The problem is they think you're stupid.
28:05
That's what they think. They think they can just pitch
28:08
whatever narrative they want to pitch and it's gonna work
28:10
out for them. And in the past it was true
28:13
it would and that, of course is because the legacy
28:16
media was willing to play ball. But not anymore. I
28:20
think the legacy media understands now that they can't protect
28:24
people like Leon Black anymore, and that people are demanding answers,
28:29
and people know that what they've been told and what
28:32
they've been shown is a bunch of bullshit. And look,
28:35
it's not just people like me telling you that anymore.
28:37
You have the emails for yourself. Now. While mister Epstein
28:41
kept advising mister Black on financial matters, he was also
28:45
branching into less conventional fair Mister Black had a long
28:49
running affair with a Russian woman, guselle Ganieva, and by
28:53
twenty fifteen, she was threatening to go public with allegations
28:57
of sexual abuse unless he paid her one hundred million dollars.
29:01
According to Justice Department Epstein documents and interviews with people
29:06
familiar with her claims, mister Epstein was there to help,
29:10
and we read a bunch of those core documents absolutely atrocious. Now, look,
29:17
there is zero doubt that miss Ganieva entered into this
29:21
relationship with her eyes wide open. And this isn't a
29:24
case of a young crol that was trafficed by Epstein
29:27
to Leon Black. The problem with Guselle Ganieva is she
29:32
says that she was abused. Now, of course, there's two
29:36
sides to every story, and I like to give people
29:38
the benefit of the doubt, but not when we're talking
29:41
about people like Leon Black. Sorry, buddy, you don't get
29:44
the benefit of the doubt from me. That July, after
29:51
the two men met, mister Epstein drafted a menacing email
29:55
that was apparently met for mister Black to send to
29:57
Miss Ganieva, who at the time was in her third
30:01
I felt it necessary to contact some friends in FSB.
30:04
The message read referring to the Russian Security Service, and
30:08
this is what I was telling you a few months ago.
30:11
This is a very concerning email, and it really goes
30:14
to the heart of the whole conversation about Jeffrey Epstein
30:19
being intelligence. What he could just reach out to some
30:22
friends in FSB. How many friends do you have in FSB.
30:29
The message warned that her attempt the blackmail a US
30:32
businessman would be viewed in Russia, which was trying to
30:35
attract Western investments, as a grave threat and would be
30:38
dealt with extremely harshly, basically setting her up to get killed, right,
30:44
I mean we're talking about Russia here. You really think
30:47
that the Russian mafia or the FSB or putin all
30:51
the same shit, right, gives a goddamn about this girl's life,
30:54
this woman's life, especially if she's not connected to anybody.
30:58
The message suggested that mister Black could pay her fifty
31:01
thousand a month for two years. I expect never ever
31:04
to hear a threat from you again, mister Epstein wrote
31:07
in mister Black's voice. Guys, are you paying attention yet?
31:12
Epstein wasn't just some loan predator with some proclivities who
31:16
happened to know some friends. There is no indication that
31:20
mister Black read the message which mister Epstein sent to himself,
31:24
or that it was sent to Miss Kanieva, but it
31:26
became something of a playbook for mister Epstein in the
31:29
weeks ahead. Later that month, he emailed Sergey Belakov's, a
31:34
well connected Russian government official, to request a favor. He
31:38
explained that Miss Ganieva had tried to blackmail a group
31:42
of powerful businessmen in New York. It's bad for business
31:45
for everyone involved. Mister Epstein asked if he had any suggestions. Oh,
31:50
I'm sure he does, you know, falling out of a window, poisoning,
31:54
plenty of suggestions. Mister Belakhov responded by leveling damage personal
32:00
allegations against Miss Ganieva and said that limiting her access
32:04
to the US would be a great threat to her business.
32:08
At the time, mister Epstein was in regular contact with
32:11
Brad Karp, the chairman of the law firm Paul Weiss
32:15
and one of Black's most trusted advisors. Mister Epstein and
32:18
mister Karp discussed whether they could somehow block Miss Ganieva
32:22
from the US, which she had most recently entered on
32:25
a Torus visa. And there was a whole big thing
32:29
about Leon Black trying to get a UK passport for
32:32
Miss Ganieva as well. If you don't think these dudes
32:35
were engaging in immigration fraud, you got another thing coming.
32:39
They most certainly were, I know, not as sillacious, not
32:43
as ritzy, not headline grabbing, but the kind of shit
32:47
that sends you to prison. Another possibility was to enlist
32:51
law enforcement your call on FBI or NYPD. Mister Epstein
32:55
wrote to mister Karp, proposing that Miss Ganieva be arrested
32:59
after mister Black presses her, passes her excuse me a
33:02
large check, grand larceny, et cetera. There is no indication
33:06
that they went to law enforcement at the time. Well,
33:10
Epstein could have just called one of his buddies, maybe
33:12
his handler, Hey, so and so, let's go after this person.
33:18
Mister Epstein tracked down information about Gnieva's whereabouts. How do
33:22
you think he did that? Refer back to my comment
33:24
about his handler, her acquaintances, and even her young son.
33:28
He suggested to mister Carp that mister Black enlists private
33:31
investigators from Nardello in company. The Nardello investigators soon began
33:37
running surveillance on Miss Ganieva, and in August they put
33:41
in motion a plan to secretly record a series of
33:44
meetings between mister Black and Miss Ganieva at posh New
33:48
York restaurants. The goal was to catch her on tape
33:52
admitting that mister Black had not abused her. Email showed
33:56
that mister Epstein and mister Carp strategized before and after
34:00
some of the encounters, and Karp has gone from his
34:03
law firm by the way, he had to step down
34:06
because he's a bullshit artist and another person that was
34:09
enabling Jeffrey Epstein's nonsense, But yeah care about his reputation
34:17
over meals at the Four Seasons, La Bernardine and the Modern,
34:21
mister Black increased the amount of money he was offering
34:24
Miss Ganieva while sprinkling in threats about her ending up
34:27
in jail if she didn't stop threatening him. According to
34:30
transcripts of the recordings, mister Epstein suggested raising the offer
34:35
to one hundred thousand a month for years into the future,
34:39
a proposal that appears to have carried the day. The
34:44
final deal, struck on October twenty fifteen, called for mister
34:48
Black to pay Miss Ganijeva a total of eighteen million
34:51
over the next fifteen years in return she signed a
34:55
non disclosure agreement in which he said that the allegation
34:58
she made against Black were not t true. Mister Epstein
35:02
appeared to be involved in setting up the payments too
35:04
Miss Ganieva through a generically named trust email show. His
35:09
work on the Ganieva matter was not mentioned in the
35:12
Decert report. Of course it wasn't because it was a whitewash.
35:16
I told you that at the time, and now we
35:18
have those receipts. So next time you hear about one
35:22
of these internal investigations, keep in mind what happened with Deckert,
35:28
because this is pretty much the playbook they have. One
35:31
of these white shoe law firms come in, they run
35:34
some kind of nonsense about how great things are and
35:37
how have they found nothing, and how everything's on the
35:40
up and up, and then people just accept it and
35:43
we all move on. Well, turns out that Deckert was bullshitting.
35:47
They didn't do a robust investigation, and Leon Black was
35:52
a lot more connected to Jeffrey Epstein financially and otherwise
35:56
than anyone ever let on. And in the next episode
36:00
where we picked this article back up, we'll continue that discussion.
36:04
All the information that goes with this episode can be
36:07
found in the description box. What's up, everyone, and welcome
36:11
to another episode of the Epstein Chronicles. In this episode,
36:15
we're going to pick up where we left off with
36:17
that New York Times article talking about Leon Black and
36:21
his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And once again, this article
36:26
was authored by Matthew Goldstein, Jessica Silver Greenberg, Steve Eater,
36:31
and David Enrich. The same month as the deal with
36:35
miss Kanieva, mister Black and mister Epstein worked out an
36:39
agreement of their own. It involved a payment of twenty
36:42
million in fees to mister Epstein. The plan appeared to
36:46
be structured, at least in part, to avoid taxes. Again,
36:51
that's what they were doing. The whole entire point of
36:54
going to Jeffrey Epstein is to avoid taxes. You don't
36:58
have to be a genius to figure this out. You
37:00
don't have to be inspector gadget. Mister Black would pay
37:06
ten million to Epstein's primary company, Southern Trust, but the
37:10
other ten million would be in the form of a
37:12
donation to one of mister Epstein's charitable organizations, Gratitude America,
37:18
which until then did not have any funds Gratitude America
37:22
soon began dispensing the money in ways that could burnish
37:25
mister Epstein's reputation or strengthen his ties to figures in
37:30
academia and other fields. And if you were wondering why
37:34
they didn't charge Epstein with RICO, here's just another example
37:38
of why they didn't want to catch all these big fish,
37:41
all these big donors, all these people that keeps shit moving.
37:47
And it's really no more complicated than that. They had
37:50
everything they needed to make it a RICO case. They
37:53
chose not to. That was the decision. There were benefits,
38:00
mister Black two. Mister Epstein's accountant, Richard Kahn, noted in
38:04
an email to one of mister Black's advisors that a
38:07
goal of the arrangement was to maximize deductions, and mister
38:11
Black would be able to write off the ten million
38:14
and potentially lower as tax bill. The catch was that
38:17
private foundations like Gratitude America have to file public reports
38:21
disclosing their donors in an effort to avoid public disclosure
38:24
of Leon's name. This charitable donation should be paid from
38:28
your LLC that owns automobiles, mister Kahn wrote to mister
38:33
Black's advisor. Ultimately the money would come from a different
38:36
entity BV seventy LLC that had been set up to
38:40
own mister Black's yacht. It's all one big ass shell game,
38:45
and that's why it was laughable when they tried to
38:47
tell you that Epstein was only worth what six hundred
38:49
and sixty million? Yeah, on the books. If that's what
38:54
he has on the books, how much do you think
38:56
was off the books at least double at least, because
39:01
remember that money is accruing interest. He has it somewhere,
39:05
and my guess is it's you know, offshore or something
39:07
like that, and it's accruing interest as it sits there.
39:11
So not only is he not paying taxes on it,
39:14
he continues to generate wealth on the deposit. And God
39:19
only knows where that money is now or who is
39:22
entitled to it. My guess is that Konnen Endyke. They
39:26
know where all the money is at least in my opinion,
39:29
you're around Epstein for that long, you're with him for
39:31
that length of time, and not as some bystander either. Right,
39:35
these guys were right in the mix, the accountant and
39:38
the house lawyer, pretty sure they know where the proverbial
39:41
bodies are buried. While the emails between aids to mister
39:47
Epstein and mister Black describe the donation as part of
39:50
a fee payment, the Decker Report implied that it was
39:53
simply an act of charity. Mister Black felt comfortable making
39:57
this donation because he understood that epste was a strong
40:01
proponent of scientific innovation. Oh yeah, that's exactly what was
40:06
going on. Epstein's a strong proponent of scientific innovation. If
40:12
that means abusing people and bundling money, then I guess
40:16
Epstein's Einstein. Short of that, just a scumbag. That's it,
40:20
dirty ass scumbag. Mister Widen, in his letter to mister Black,
40:26
said the emails pointed to possible illegal activity. Intentionally disguising
40:31
payments for professional service as charitable contribution to claim a
40:35
tax deduction would constitute tax fraud. He wrote, And look,
40:40
if you want to get a guy like Leon Black,
40:42
that's how you're gonna have to do it. It's not
40:45
going to be the traditional way. You're not going to
40:47
get them, you know, red handed involved in Epstein's bullshit.
40:51
You're gonna have to really dig. But I think there's
40:54
enough here as far as financials go that a true,
40:57
full blown investigation should be initiated, and the fact that
41:01
we haven't seen that yet tells you everything you need
41:03
to know about the seriousness of the DOJ, the SEC,
41:07
and everybody else involved. But here's the good news. Senator
41:10
Widen has sent a strongly worded letter to Leon Black
41:14
that'll show him. Mister Widen said in the interview that
41:17
the Decker report appeared to whitewash some of Black's actions.
41:21
An Apollo spokeswoman said Deckert's review was thorough and independent. No,
41:26
it wasn't. Sorry, it wasn't And I called it out
41:30
at the very beginning. The second they announced it, I knew,
41:34
I knew the fix was in. You don't have these
41:37
kinds of reports ever come back with bombshells ever, and
41:40
they choose a company like Deckert or a law firm
41:42
like Deckert that they're familiar with, and they know that
41:45
they can, you know, work with if you will. And
41:47
the whole entire goal was to calm down investors who
41:51
were starting to panic a bit about Epstein and Leon
41:55
Black's relationship. That's what the whole investigation was about, not
41:58
about getting to the truth, not about finding out what's
42:01
what but about applying some bomb to a wound that
42:06
is gaping. And they hope that the report would make
42:09
it all go away. But there's just too much here,
42:13
and there is no way that that decord report can
42:16
be taken seriously, at least in my opinion. Mister Black's
42:21
voluminous gift giving drew the attention of the IRS. Starting
42:24
in twenty sixteen, the agency began auditing mister Black and
42:28
a woman named Anastasia Ziro, with whom he was having
42:32
an affair. According to Justice Department documents and two people
42:36
familiar with the relationship, mister Epstein worked with mister Black's
42:41
accountants on audits of the billionaire's taxes, but he appeared
42:45
to be especially involved in the audit of miss Siro,
42:49
a former model from Ukraine, another person from Ukraine, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus,
42:56
all these countries. Do you think that's a coincidence, It
43:00
most certainly is not. After Epstein was now the first
43:03
time here in America, he turned his attention to Eastern
43:06
Europe and to South America. And all these girls he
43:10
was bringing in were from these countries where they don't
43:14
really have recourse, right, what are they gonna do, go
43:17
complain to putin, go complain to insert dictator here. Not
43:21
gonna work out so well for them. And Jeffrey Epstein
43:25
and his associates, they knew that, and that's why they
43:28
targeted people in places like Ukraine and Russia. Recently released
43:34
records show that mister Black was paying her millions of dollars.
43:38
The IRS was focused in part on more than six
43:41
hundred thousand that Miss Cerro had received from one of
43:44
mister Black's trusts. He had not paid taxes on the
43:47
payments because she considered them gifts. The email show an
43:52
IRS auditor wanted to review mister Black's gift tax return
43:56
to see if he too had classified them as gifts.
44:00
The auditor also sought to interview Miss Zero about her
44:03
relationship with mister Black, who had helped her set up
44:07
as an art dealer. Record show, Oh come on, you
44:10
mean to tell me that they weren't reporting their money.
44:13
That would never happen for somebody like Leon Black. Right,
44:17
that's a guy that really wants to be above board.
44:20
He really wants to pay everything he owes. That's what
44:23
the record shows, right, that Leon Black is the kind
44:26
of guy that's gonna pay all of his taxes. As
44:31
mister Epstein sought to resolve Miss Ciro's audit, he acted
44:35
as a liaison between her and mister Black's advisors. Mister
44:39
Epstein arranged for mister Black's accountant to write a letter
44:42
to the IRS auditor confirming that the payments had been gifts.
44:46
Mister Epstein spent months dealing with the Zero audit, and
44:49
when it appeared to get resolved, he took credit. A
44:52
spokesman for Miss Zero said mister Epstein helped with the
44:55
audit because he was a tax expert. After the audit
44:59
was complete, she had nothing more to do with Epstein,
45:02
he said. A tax expert. Huh cool, and I'm an astrophysicist.
45:08
The fuck you mean a tax expert. I think what
45:10
you mean is a pilfering from the American people expert.
45:14
That's what you mean, right. The report that Deckert prepared
45:18
for Apollo noted that mister Epstein had helped deal with
45:21
a number of IRS audits of mister Black. It did
45:24
not mention his role in the audit of Miss Hero. Again,
45:29
just another black mark on Deckert and this so called
45:32
independent review. And I'll tell you what it feels kind
45:37
of vindicating having this come out now, because I told
45:41
you this from the jump, and at the time it
45:43
was my speculation, right, I didn't have anything to go on,
45:46
just my spidy sense and the history of these kinds
45:49
of investigations. But now that we have the evidence, it
45:54
all makes sense, doesn't it. Mister Epstein's involvement in personal
45:59
matters was only increasing after miss Black learned of one
46:03
of her husband's extra marital affairs. Mister Epstein suggested to
46:07
mister Black that he separated from her so he doesn't
46:10
have a heart attack. As mister Epstein put it in
46:13
an email to mister carp, the Blacks remain married. Mister
46:18
Black's lawyers said he never asked mister Epstein for marital advice. Oh,
46:22
I'm sure. I'm sure they never chopped it up. Did
46:28
he ask Epstein for advice about Russian women? I'm guessing
46:31
you did. One of the other women with whom mister
46:35
Black had a relationship was the yoga instructor mister Epstein
46:39
was involved in paying her. The woman, who was originally
46:42
from Siberia, had known mister Epstein since at least two
46:46
thousand and nine, when she was in her late twenties, Siberia.
46:50
Look how far their net went, all the way to Siberia,
46:55
all the way down to South America and everywhere in between.
47:00
But sure tell me again that Epstein was a loan
47:03
predator and he was just acting on his own desires.
47:10
Emails indicate that mister Epstein tried to connect her to
47:13
powerful men, including the then Prince Andrew and a senior
47:16
JP Morgan Chase executive Jess Staley. Mister Staley has denied
47:22
knowing her. A spokesman for Andrew mount Batten Windsor didn't
47:25
respond to her request for comment. In twenty seventeen, she
47:30
reached out to mister Epstein after receiving twenty eight thousand
47:33
from him, not the one hundred thousand that mister Black
47:36
had told her to expect. I just wanted to ask
47:39
if there was any misunderstanding, she wrote. She added that
47:43
she previously had been paid directly by mister Black and
47:47
didn't know how the new system would work. After some
47:50
back and forth, mister Epstein confirmed that the full amount
47:53
was on its way next week you will receive, he wrote.
47:58
Mister Widen said in his letter that mister Black appeared
48:01
to use mister Epstein as a middleman, raising concerns of
48:05
potential money laundering. Potential hunh hmm. I would say that
48:10
there is a one hundred percent chance that they were
48:14
laundering money. And if you crack the books, just about
48:17
every single person that we've talked about that was connected
48:19
to Ebstein financially would be involved. And again that's why
48:25
we don't see Rico. Despite or perhaps because of their
48:29
close relationship, tension had been building between mister Abstein and
48:33
mister Black. In twenty seventeen, that's when it boiled over.
48:38
Mister Epstein had received a one hundred and seventy million
48:41
dollars by then, but complained that he was not getting
48:44
the money or gratitude that he deserved. That spring, mister
48:48
Epstein mentioned to mister carp that a rumor was circulating
48:51
that mister Black was using cocaine. Mister Black soon learned
48:56
what mister Epstein said, and he was furious. In what
49:00
Stein later described as an ugly meeting, Black accused him
49:03
of spreading the cocaine rumor because he was dissatisfied with
49:07
his compensation. He said mister Epstein was out of control.
49:12
In their statement to the Times, mister Black's lawyer said,
49:15
other than experimenting with drugs early in his life, mister
49:19
Black had not used the legal substances in more than
49:22
forty years. I don't believe that Wall Street guys. They
49:25
liked their blow, so I have no doubt that these
49:30
dudes were dabbling at the very least. The men continued
49:34
to meet and do business over the next several months,
49:37
but signs of a strain persisted. That summer. Mister Epstein
49:40
complained about incurring a step financial loss while helping mister
49:44
Black save millions of dollars in capital gains on a
49:48
complicated transaction involving a Geo Commetee statue and Sazani Painting.
49:55
Something's wrong, mister Epstein wrote in a long, rambling email
49:59
to mister Black in August of twenty seventeen. I'm not
50:02
sure what it is, but it's clearly not the normal you.
50:06
Mister Epstein lamented that despite everything he had done for
50:09
mister Black, he had failed to even buy me lunch. Again.
50:13
Everything's transactional. Keep that in mind. Epstein didn't have friends.
50:17
Everything was about transactions. Mister Black did not appear to
50:22
respond to the email. Two months later, allegations about the
50:26
movie producer Harvey Weinstein's sexual misconduct were dominating headlines, and
50:31
mister Epstein was viewing mister Black's situation with women through
50:34
that lens. We live in a world where men in
50:38
power cannot be seen to be taking advantage of young
50:41
twenties women, mister Epstein wrote in an email to mister
50:44
carp He said that some of the ways mister Black
50:47
was handling his affairs with women were fraught with danger
50:51
and asking for trouble. Mister Black and mister Epstein kept
50:55
working together for at least another year, although fallout was
50:59
just so bad they kept working together for another year
51:03
or the fallout story is a bunch of bs. In
51:06
the fall of twenty eighteen, mister Black asked mister Epstein
51:09
to review his latest tax return. He invited mister Epstein
51:13
to participate in a planned investment. Mister Black also pushed
51:17
mister Epstein to repay thirty million he had borrowed from
51:20
mister Black in connection with the art transaction. Mister Epstein
51:24
wired ten million to one of mister Black's companies, but
51:27
did not repay the rest. On November fifth, twenty eighteen,
51:32
assistance to mister Epstein and mister Black emailed about rescheduling
51:36
a lunch the two men had planned. After that, there
51:40
do not appear to be any records of the men
51:42
communicating with each other, though mister Epstein on occasion received
51:46
emails in which acquaintances shared gossip about mister Black. Well,
51:52
we only know about this email, right. Epstein could have
51:56
had other emails burner accounts that we don't even know about,
51:59
and my guess is that he did. Later that November,
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the Miami Herald began publishing a series of articles about
52:08
mister Ebstein. In July of twenty nineteen, mister Abstein was
52:12
arrested and charged with sex trafficking. Mister Black played down
52:16
their ties. Speaking to investors that month, he described the
52:20
extent of the work that mister Epstein had performed for
52:23
him from time to time. Mister Epstein has provided professional
52:27
services to my family partnership and related family entities involving tax,
52:32
estate planning and philanthropic advice. Now, after everything that you
52:38
just learned, after everything you knew already, are you buying
52:42
that narrative? Do you really think that Jeffrey Epstein was
52:46
only helping with tax advice or with a state planning.
52:50
I have a very very hard time believing that, and
52:52
in fact, I don't believe it at all. So what
52:55
do you folks think? Shoot me some emails and let
52:57
me know what you think about Leon Black and the
53:00
relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. All the information that goes with
53:05
this episode can be found in the description box.