For Leon Black is an Honorable Man


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You can read the full report filed by Dechert LLP on behalf of the Board of Directors of Apollo Global Management here.


We are told by the lawyers hired by the Board of Directors of Apollo Global Management to investigate the Chairman of that same Board of Directors that the $158 MILLION Leon Black transferred to his personal friend and convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was for “legitimate advice on trust and estate planning, tax issues, issues relating to artwork, Black’s airplane, Black’s yacht, and other similar matters”.

We are told that the bulk of the funds were transferred “on an ad hoc basis based on Black’s perceived value of Epstein’s work”, with no agreements signed or unsigned. We are told that the bulk of the funds were paid for tax advice that would only realize potential gains well in the future, advice that was later determined to originate not with Epstein but with Black’s regular tax lawyers.

Payments of this magnitude and in this manner seem unlike the behavior of any enormously wealthy person in the history of the world, particularly a man whose enormous wealth has been notoriously built on precisely the opposite behavior, but Leon Black says this is the truth.

And Leon Black is an honorable man.

We are told by the lawyers hired by the Board of Directors of Apollo Global Management to investigate the Chairman of that same Board of Directors that they have “seen no evidence that Black or any employee of the Family Office or Apollo was involved in any way with Epstein’s criminal activities at any time”.

We are also told that Black’s friendship with Epstein goes back to the mid-1990s, and that before and after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for solicitation and procuring of minors for prostitution, Black “regularly visited” Epstein at his New York townhouse for afternoon “social visits”, as well as Epstein’s Paris apartment, his Palm Beach home, his Santa Fe ranch, and his private Caribbean island.

Yet Leon Black says that he merely saw Epstein as “a confirmed bachelor with eclectic tastes, who often employed attractive women”, a man whose criminal offenses were “limited to a single instance of soliciting a 17 year old prostitute” who “had shown Epstein false identification suggesting that she was not underage”. Yes, Leon Black believes “in giving people second chances”.

And Leon Black is an honorable man.

They’re all honorable men. Men of stature. Lions of Wall Street.

Leon Black. Les Wexner. Jes Staley. Glenn Dubin. Larry Summers.

I speak not to disprove what Leon Black spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.

I know that the evil of Jeffrey Epstein would not have been possible without the actions of these honorable men, regardless of what remorse might be in their words today.

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with the American dream that once was,
And I must pause till it come back to me.


Comments

  1. I ache, in my gut, when I let down my shields long enough for the lies of the world to penetrate my soul. I ache that deception, spin and prevarication are the rule and not the exception. Were it not for my friends, for my Pack, I would retreat to my castle and pull up the drawbridge behind me. Alone, one man can do little. Together, men may transform the world.

  2. Hang in there, we’ll work through the turbulence separately yet together.

  3. Avatar for TARS TARS says:

    If you say anything enough times people will start to believe it.

  4. Avatar for robh robh says:

    Obviously Leon Black made his billions by being the type of soft touch chump who got outnegotiated by college dropout Epstein into paying $160mm for T&E advice.

  5. Thanks for publicly pointing out the ridiculousness of this charade, Ben. There is little darkness in the hearts of men that surprises me anymore, but the degree to which Epstein was connected to the powerful shakes me awake.

  6. One need only view the masquerade sex orgy scene in Stanley Kubrick’s final film: “Eyes Wide Shut” to understand just what was going on between Jeffrey Epstein, Leon Black, and many others. For centuries, the extremely wealthy and privileged have been free to indulge their wildest fantasies under highly secretive, vetted circumstances where all participants are bound to absolute secrecy. Adherence to such secrecy by all others is driven by the simple practical expedient that one’s own perversity might be revealed in the event of a catastrophic exposure. Secret societies with ruthless secrecy rites are as old as recorded time. SECRETS=POWER & EXPOSURE=RUIN. Leon Black and many others were enablers of a ruthless Jeffrey Epstein who, in turn, knew they would never squeal, thence to go down with the ship.

  7. Dumbfounded. $158 million in payments from 2012 to 2017. Just one out of how many? Blackmail appears to be very lucrative for a time. But then Epstein got “suicided”. Would be a happy day for many to have everything in the Epstein vaults published on the internet. Giant flush of a lot of hypocritical elites, both parties. We could start fresh after that morality play

  8. Avatar for bhunt bhunt says:

    It’s crazy, right? My question is always … where do they find the time?

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