BLACK leon
---
son BEN LIBTARD NETWORK STATE BS
EPSTEIN MANDELSON
APOLLO BD OF PEACE
PALANTIR?
At Drexel, Black was regarded as "junk bond king" Michael Milken's right-hand man.[14]
---
- [## Leon Black Walks Out Of Epstein Interview After Being Subpoenaed, Decries 'Political Stunt'
4 days agoIn a statement to reporters after the testimony, Black's attorney Susan Eldrich claimed the subpoenas were a "premeditated decision" by lawmakers and a "planned political stunt," and emphasized the billionaire "never abused a woman."
](https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/billionaire-leon-black-testifies-congress-131959436.html)
- [
Front Page Detectives
The Epstein network — inside Leon Black's $158 million relationship with Jeffrey Epstein
23 hours agoIn the years since Jeffrey Epstein's arrest and death, millions of pages of investigative records have been released, naming powerful figures, documenting financial transactions, and detailing serious allegations.
](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/the-epstein-network-inside-leon-black-s-158-million-relationship-with-jeffrey-epstein/ar-AA26PRLi)
- [
Associated Press News
Lawmakers subpoena billionaire Leon Black after contentious interview on Epstein payments
4 days agoHouse lawmakers are questioning billionaire investor Leon Black as part of their investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and the powerful people around him.
Insider---
mpu 6 26 mpu
Peter Thiel's Plan To Replace Democracy (And Profit Off What Comes Next)
milton grandson 
lonsdale
gil duran: 9
In 1997, there was a book that came out called “The Sovereign Individual.”
3:03
It argued that in the 21st century, two technologies would result basically in the overthrow of democracy
3:11
and the demise of nations like the United States.
3:14
Cyber currency, which we would call crypto today.
3:17
And the other one was advanced automation that would create a world without jobs,
3:21
and that wealthy individuals who were savvy investors could profit from this coming doom
3:27
and prepare for it by making the right investments.
3:30
This book had a major impact on Peter Thiel.
3:33
And of course, it influenced the people Thiel was paying.
3:37
Joe Lansdale got to work.
3:39
He started a nonprofit, California Common Sense , allegedly dedicated to transparency and government
3:44
spending, so that voters could make a difference if they found things they were unhappy with.
3:48
On the surface, that sounds great, but two founders of that nonprofit started a for-profit:
3:53
OpenGOV.
3:54
OpenGOV is a software service for government agencies to manage data.
3:57
The idea of replacing democratic processes in the hands of all of us
GHIS MAXWELL!
4:29
But the think tanks would herald a few successful versions of their privatization plan.
4:34
Like Sandy Springs, Georgia, famously the first city in America
4:38
to privatize nearly all government services.
4:41
It was the darling of the libertarian press.
4:43
Everything for-profit, nothing public.
4:46
And a consulting firm making a little cash off the taxpayers at every juncture.
4:49
Those extra taxes for corporate profit started adding up, though.
4:54
Eventually, Sandy Springs unprivatized
4:56
saving taxpayers millions of dollars a year.
4:59
There were also nascent communities focused on Christian values
5:03
that the network state media heralds.
5:05
Battle Ground, Washington,
5:06
where a data center billionaire is buying up all the property to own the town,
5:11
the mayor is on his payroll,
5:12
and Highland Rim, a series of developments in Appalachia
5:16
run by the investment firm New Founding.
5:18
And that's not even including the California Forever Project,
5:21
a proposed tech city in Solano County
5:24
funded by Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, Sam Altman and other billionaires.
5:29
But what if this was never really about these little mini governments?
5:33
Here's Peter Thiel saying the quiet part out loud in 2010.
5:37
[Thiel] Technology is this incredible alternative to politics.
...
7:13
You could pass laws, know, Cicero's in 15 states, we're getting dozens of laws passed.
7:17
And then we're going to teach people that and go to the national level.
7:20
[Gil] Riling people up is definitely part of their game plan.
7:22
That's what we saw in the San Francisco recalls.
7:24
San Francisco had a spike in crime during the pandemic,
7:28
but so did almost every big city in the United States.
7:30
Only in San Francisco,
7:32
which has extremely low crime rates compared to most cities in red states,
7:37
did they create this massive panic using social media and doom influencers
7:43
to convince everybody that everything was worse than it ever been.
7:47
And as Lonsdale got into nonprofits and think tanks,
7:49
Patri Friedman – remember him?
7:51
Milton Friedman's grandson?
7:53
Started his own VC firm with backing from Peter Thiel
7:56
called Pronomos Capital, existing entirely for investing in privatized governments.
8:01
In Honduras, Pronomos invested in the first government
8:04
run entirely by a for-profit corporation: Prospera.
8:08
[Gil] Prospera is this little enclave on the island of Roatan in Honduras
8:13
That claims to be its own little charter city
8:16
that was funded by American venture capitalists and has been touted
8:20
as the flagship project of the network state movement.
...
lonsdale
8:24
But the real flagship project is something bigger:
8:27
the entire United States government.
8:30
It shows in policy.
8:32
Remember the whole thing about taking over Greenland?
8:35
That idea emerged and was celebrated by the people we've been talking about.
8:38
I think having a frontier is very healthy.
8:40
I think part of America being great is that it's is growing and creating more wealth for everyone.
8:44
If the people in Greenland want to be part of us, if we can use those resources
8:48
better and make sure Russia and China don't get advantages in the Arctic.
8:51
The Freedom City as a name didn't really gain momentum,
8:54
but the idea is there, and the influence in the administration is clear.
8:58
Joe Lansdale helped staff up the Trump administration
9:01
and just recently accompanied administration officials to the Philippines
9:04
to christen a new regulatory zone.
9:07
Just last week, we signed a historic deal with the Philippines, 4000 acres
9:11
right next to Subic Bay, where we're going to build a
9:14
first-of-its-kind, AI-native industrial park.
9:17
I was there for a day in the Philippines with everyone.
9:20
They’re, they’re excited, what you guys are doing.
9:22
That sounds a lot like a startup city....
9:37
that this stuff could travel to the White House.
9:42
[Gil] In September 2024, there was a conference at Fort Mason
9:46
in San Francisco called Reboot 2024,
9:49
and its website announced that we are now in a new reality.
9:53
And that Silicon Valley was waking up and about to become this powerful force in politics.
9:58
And the guest speaker was Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation
10:02
who was the guy who had shepherded Project 2025.
10:05
So here you had tech VCs in San Francisco...
kishner
10:20
for maritime prosperity zones,
10:23
districts on American soil with fewer regulations
10:26
for corporations to build ships and reinvigorate the industrial base.
10:30
Then there's the New American Industrial Alliance,
10:33
a tech industry interest group pushing for unrestricted data center growth.
10:37
They were listed as co-sponsors of the Blueprint for America,
10:41
lobbying for prosperity zones on American soil.
10:44
A plan to sell federal and public land to private companies
10:48
to build low regulation, low tax havens for progress.
10:52
Their co-sponsor on the Blueprint was the company behind Prospera in Honduras,
10:56
whose lobbying disclosures show they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars
11:00
pushing for prosperity zones.
11:02
But they also spent big on begging the American government for handouts of your money.
11:08
They've lobbied on refunding the US International Development Financial Corporation,
11:12
a government organization run by Epstein associate Ben Black
11:15
that uses tax dollars to invest in American companies abroad.
11:20
That's privatized foreign aid.
11:22
And they might finally get their way.
11:24
Black went to Honduras and promised investment in real estate and technology there,
11:28
including an investment in La Ceiba, which is slated to be absorbed by Prospera.
11:34
But it's more than just government handouts.
11:37
It's war crimes.
11:38
So we did a master plan.
11:39
And we've developed ways to redevelop Gaza.
11:41
Gaza is President Trump's and saying has amazing potential.
11:44
And this is for the people of Gaza.
11:45
We've developed it into zones.
11:47
[Gil] It was sort of insane to see it all come together in this way.
...11:55
there's always the idea of a new city that they're proposing.
11:59
And it's not clear why we need these new cities.
12:01
You know, Gaza should be rebuilt for for the Palestinians.
12:05
But these guys see it as an opportunity to take the land.
12:09
And so that shows you the degree to which this thinking is starting to imbue everything that they do.
12:15
[Sean] Look at how the people in this fringe movement
12:18
reacted to other invasions.
12:20
In 2019, Mark Lutter, leader of a Peter Thiel funded new city think tank, said that
12:25
overthrowing the Venezuelan government would be an opportunity for these projects.
12:30
And when the invasion did happen, Lutter suggested America
12:33
establish a Florida or Texas style government there.
12:36
He cites America paying for a wholesale development plan after regime change.
12:41
Which is exactly what we're doing in Iran today,
12:44
to the tune of $300 billion.
12:47
Palmer Luckey, Lonsdale and Thiel associate, and founder of AI defense contractor Anduril,
12:52
pictured here in cosplay,
12:54
suggested a privatized city on Guantanamo Bay in Cuba,
12:57
which President Trump also threatened with invasion.
13:01
Again, nobody wants this.
13:02
They know that.
13:03
That's why they hate populism.
13:05
That's why they hate democratic representation
13:07
despite all of this being couched in freedom.
13:10
What they're asking for is to exit entirely from any government structure.
13:14
But that's just not how it works,
13:16
especially when most of these guys are government contractors, and are still wanting
13:20
to have the benefits of our society without having the responsibilities of our society.
13:26
These are people who don't like being told “no.”
13:28
They're angry at the pushback against data centers, that we don't want AI to take over everything,
gil
13:33
that no one supports annihilating a civilization to replace it with one they can profit from.
13:38
People need to understand that the billionaires have become radicalized against democracy,
13:42
and they're in the process of using everything they have to try to destroy it.
13:45
And that's the battle of our moment.
13:47
That's the battle of our time.
...
13:49
It's not too late to push back.
13:51
Public response to data centers works.
13:53
Many of the governance as a service startups are starting their work
13:56
in towns and states where you can still have a voice to stop them.
14:01
The billionaire class wants to turn your home into their playland,
14:05
completely change how everything is run to funnel more wealth to themselves,
14:09
create chaos,
14:11
and then when everything is all f*cked up,
14:13
walk away with their winnings to their own private enclaves,
14:16
all under the guise of fixing a broken government.
14:20
A government that they broke.
14:21
And yeah, sure, the government is broken,
14:24
but it's not because of democracy or lack of corporate privatization.
14:28
It's because of corporate power.
14:30
We need more democracy and less corporate control.
---
F SOC HMMN
LEON BLACK, JEFFREY EPSTEIN & THE DEUTSCHE BANK – Team Fsociety
https://teamfsociety.org/en/leon-black-epstein/
---
WORLD SOC
...
Blackwater, since renamed ACADEMI, was acquired by the Constellis network in 2010. Former US Attorney General John Ashcroft, who provided the legal pretext for torture during the George W. Bush administration, is one of the current board members of ACADEMI. In 2016 Constellis was acquired by Apollo Global Management, LLC, an American equity firm.
The CEO and founder of Apollo Global, Leon Black, sits on the influential Council on Foreign Relations. His father, Eli Black, was the owner of United Fruit Brands, commonly known as Chiquita Brands International. Eli Black committed suicide in 1975 when he leapt from the 44th floor of the Pan Am building in New York City. It was later revealed that Eli Black was under investigation by federal regulators for bribing Honduran government officials.
Meanwhile, co-founder and fellow billionaire, Joshua Harris, made repeated visits to the White House earlier this year, according to the New York Times. During these visits it was reported that Harris was looking for a job within the administration, and that he met several times with special adviser to President Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner. During these meetings it was reported Harris was advising Kushner on “infrastructure policy.” Currently Harris does not serve in any official capacity in the White House, however Apollo provided Jared Kushner a $184 million gift in the form of a loan from the firm to Kushner Companies to refinance a skyscraper in downtown Chicago....
---
son ben usaid
Benjamin Black is an American investor and Chief Executive Officer of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC).[1] He is the founder and managing partner of Fortinbras Enterprises and the CEO of Osiris Acquisition Corp, with a career spanning roles in private equity, corporate law, and credit investing. Black has held positions at firms including Apollo Global Management, Goldman Sachs, and Sullivan & Cromwell, and has served on the boards of various companies and nonprofit organizations.
A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and New York University School of Law, Black has earned multiple advanced degrees. In 2025, he gained attention during the DFC nomination process for his policy views on foreign aid and U.S. development strategy, and for his proposed approach to aligning the DFC’s investment portfolio with U.S. strategic interests.
Early life
Black is the son of Leon Black, a noted New York entrepreneur and Debra Black.
Black holds degrees from several universities. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in history from the University of Pennsylvania, graduating cum laude. He later completed a Juris Doctor and a Master of Business Administration at Harvard University. In 2020, he received a Master of Laws in Taxation from New York University School of Law.[2][3]
In addition to his degrees, Black is an alumnus of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.[4] During his confirmation hearing, Senator Tom Cotton noted Black’s academic background, commenting that he had “more degrees than a thermometer”.[5]
Career
In private equity
Black has worked in credit and equity investing, holding senior roles at financial firms and serving on several boards.[6][7]
Earlier in his career, he worked in private equity at Apollo Global Management, co-founded by his father, Leon Black. He also held roles as an analyst at Goldman Sachs in 2007[8] and as a corporate attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell.[6][7]
In October 2020, Black founded Fortinbras Enterprises, a New York-based credit investment fund. As of the latest regulatory filing, the firm manages $122 million in assets.[5][6][7][8][3]
If confirmed to his nominated position, Black is expected to step down from his role but retain a financial interest and receive passive income from the firm.[9]
Black serves as CEO and director of Osiris Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), which is a type of firm created to raise money through an initial public offering for the purpose of acquiring another company.[2][3][5] He was involved in raising capital for the firm.[8][10]
Black previously served as senior portfolio manager at Knowledge Universe Holdings, where he oversaw the credit portfolio.[5][6][7] He was also a principal and co-founder of OCB Partners.[5]
Nomination for Trump administration
On June 18, 2025, Benjamin Black was nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as CEO of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, succeeding Scott A. Nathan following his resignation. The nomination was placed on the Senate Executive Calendar as Calendar No. 194, pending Black’s agreement to appear and testify before any Senate committee if requested.[11] In announcing the nomination, President Trump said Black would apply his financial and deal-making experience to advance U.S. interests abroad.[8][12]
The nomination drew attention due to his limited background in foreign policy and legislative affairs.[3][10][8]
On October 7, 2025, he was confirmed.[13]
Substack essay
Black co-authored a Substack essay with entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale in January 2025 titled “How to DOGE US Foreign Aid,” which attracted attention during his nomination process.[3][14][8][10] In the essay, he criticized the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for what he described as “mission drift” and questioned funding for initiatives such as gender equity and green energy programs.[8] He advocated for reallocating portions of USAID’s budget to the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to support pro-market foreign investments that align with U.S. strategic and economic interests.[8]
Black proposed that the DFC take on greater investment risk, attract private capital, and focus on strategic sectors, including infrastructure projects such as ports and mines in locations like Greenland.[15]
Confirmation hearing
As the nominee to lead the DFC, Black testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the agency’s future under his potential leadership. Black emphasized the DFC’s dual mandate to support economic development and advance U.S. foreign policy goals, stating that he does not view the two objectives as conflicting.[16] Senator Tom Cotton, who introduced him, described him as an “America First patriot” and stated that Black would bring “a wide range of experience and expertise” to the role.[4][5]
In his opening statement before the committee, Black stated that, if confirmed, he looked forward to working with Congress to expand the DFC’s capabilities and capacity to fulfill its responsibilities.[4]
Personal filings
According to his ethics filing, Black reported personal assets of at least $219 million, including art, memorabilia, rare books, and investments in various companies. His holdings include a brokerage account, shares in blue chip stocks, and interests in funds managed by Apollo Global Management Inc. He is also the beneficiary of a discretionary trust that distributed $54 million to him over a 14-month period.[9]
Boards and philanthropy
Black serves on the boards of several organizations, including Dogpound, Huddle House, and Phaidon.[2] He is also a board member of Peninsula Real Estate, the Melanoma Research Alliance, and the Naval War College Foundation.[6] In addition, he is a member of the Global Advisory Council of the Woodrow Wilson Center and serves on the Advisory Board of Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership.[6][5]
Black and his family established the Black Family Fellowship in honor of his grandfather, Ira Ressler, a decorated World War II veteran. The fellowship supports U.S. veterans and active-duty military personnel attending Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, and Harvard Law School by providing financial assistance and professional development opportunities.[2][7]
From 2015 to 2020, he was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.[2]
See also
References...
---
10 2020 fbi
LA
acoSTA TOLD EPS IS ALLIED INTEL AGY; DERS AND EPS TALK --> MOSSAD WD CALL FOR DEBRIEF; EPS CLOSE TO BARAK AND TRAINED AS SPY UNDER HIM; BARAK THOT BB CRIM; EPS COOPEDTED MOSSAD AGENT;
DRUKOVA DAY ONE VENTURES STEAL TECH
CHABAD PUTIN JEW OLIG; RABBI SCHEERSOM; KSH STAKE IN CADRE NOT DISCL; JK MOVED RUSS $; CHABAD LAUNDER
CRAIG HOROWITZ ARTL 2004; KEN KURSON KNOWS;
KISSENGAR CHS KUSH INTRO TO CUI TUANAKAI CHIN AMB; ANBANG NEGOT 666 5TH AVE
M COHEN BEV HILL HSE UNDER MKT
RENDA REX TILLERSON NY POST SMEARS // STATE DEPT
LEON BLACK BWTR ARMS HU TRFFICK; CEO APOLLO 50M TO EPS 184M LOAN TO JK // 666
ELLIOT BROIDY PLED LAuNDER; PLAYBOY MODEL; JOEL MOWBRAY --> JEW; REP ED ROYCE, WIFE LOBBYIST;
GAWKER DISINFO 2016? --> ZERO HEDGE
---
leon David Black (born July 31, 1951)[1] is an American private equity investor. He is the former CEO of Apollo Global Management, which he co-founded in 1990 with Marc Rowan and Josh Harris.[2] Black was the chairman of the Museum of Modern Art from 2018 to 2021.[3][4][5] Black resigned from both Apollo Global Management and the Museum of Modern Art in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations and revelations that he had paid $158 million to Jeffrey Epstein.[6][7]
Early life and education
Black is a son of Eli M. Black (1921–1975), a Jewish businessman who emigrated from Poland as a child (surname, "Blachowitz") and was the chairman and later majority owner of the United Brands Company. His mother, Shirley Lubell (sister of Tulsa oil executive Benedict I. Lubell) was an artist.[8] In 1975, his father killed himself at age 53.[8][9]
Black received an AB in philosophy and history from Dartmouth College in 1973 and an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1975.[8] He served on the Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College from 2002 to 2011.[10] In 2012, Black gave US$48 million toward a new visual arts center at Dartmouth College.[11] He serves on Dartmouth's President’s Leadership Council and has endowed a chair in Shakespeare Studies as well as a program in Jewish Studies.[12]
Career
Black started out as an accountant at Peat Marwick (which later became KPMG) and with the publisher Boardroom Reports. He also interviewed at Lehman Brothers but was told he did not have the brains or personality to succeed on Wall Street.[3] From 1977 to 1990, Black was employed by investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert, where he rose to managing director and head of the Mergers & Acquisitions Group, and co-head of the Corporate Finance Department.[13] At Drexel, Black was regarded as "junk bond king" Michael Milken's right-hand man.[14]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Leon and Debra Black partnered with Aramark and the Mayor’s Fund to launch NYC Healthcare Heroes. They committed $20 million to provide hundreds of thousands of care packages, including food, household goods, and personal care items, to over 100,000 healthcare workers in New York City.
Personal life
Black is married to Debra Ressler,[15] a 1976 Barnard College graduate and Broadway producer and sister of Ares Management co-founder Antony Ressler.[16][17][18] They have four children.[19] One of their children, Benjamin, runs an investment fund and was nominated by President Donald Trump to run the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation.[20][21] Debra Black is a melanoma survivor. In 2007, the couple donated $25 million to form the new Melanoma Research Alliance.[22] Leon and Debra both serve on the board of the organization.[23]
In 2018, he was elected chairman of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. His term commenced on July 1, 2018.[3][4] His term as chairman ended on July 1, 2021, and he did not seek re-election, in the wake of protests from dozens of artists and activists over his financial ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.[5][24]
Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein
Black had a friendship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. For Epstein's 50th birthday greeting album that was compiled by Epstein's associate Ghislaine Maxwell, Black contributed a "handwritten poem with a rhyme scheme" which included the acronym "V.F.P.C." which stood for "Vanity Fair Poster Child". This was in reference to a profile of Epstein that was being written for the magazine.[25] The poem contained the lines "Blonde, Red or Brunette, spread out geographically/With this net of fish, Jeff’s now The Old Man and The Sea". He signed the poem "Love and kisses, Leon".[25]
In 2009, Black contributed $60 million in a settlement with Huntsman Corporation after Apollo was sued for backing out of a merger the previous year.[26] In 2021, Black stepped down as CEO and chairman after Dechert LLP, which had been retained several months earlier by Apollo to investigate Black's dealings with Epstein, published a report finding that Black had paid $158 million to Epstein between 2012 and 2017 for advice on taxes and estate planning.[27][28][29][30] In 2022, Black included Josh Harris in a civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) lawsuit, alleging that he led a group within Apollo attempting to tarnish his reputation after his ties to Epstein were reported.[31] Federal judge Paul Engelmayer dismissed the suit for lack of evidence, with an appeals court upholding the decision in 2023.[32][33]
In 2019, Black stated that he maintained a "limited relationship" with Epstein.[34]
In 1997, he made Epstein one of the original trustees of what is today the Debra and Leon Black Foundation.[35] In his 2020 letter to Apollo investors, Black said that Epstein provided him with "estate planning, tax and philanthropic advice" to his "family partnership and other related family entities".[36] The New York Times reported that Black had paid Epstein at least $50 million for such services from 2012 to 2017.[35] Black did not at the time confirm the $50 million sum reported by The New York Times, but did say that he paid Epstein "millions of dollars annually for his work".[37] In October 2020, Black requested that the Apollo board conduct an independent review of his relationship with Epstein, and it retained the law firm Dechert LLP to do so.[38][39][40] Black has said that he "deeply regrets" his relationship with Epstein.[41]
The review conducted by Dechert LLP was released on January 25, 2021. It showed that Black had paid Epstein around $158 million from 2012 through 2017 for financial services.[42] Using Epstein's tax avoidance strategies, Black saved at least $1.3 billion in taxes.[43] Black pledged his intention to donate $200 million to women's initiatives.[44][45] In 2023, Black paid $62.5 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands to be released from claims related to Epstein.[46] In July 2023, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee made public that it was investigating Black's tax strategies and dealings with Epstein.[47]
In July 2025, Senator Ron Wyden, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, called on the Internal Revenue Service to investigate potential tax evasion performed by Epstein for Black. Wyden accused the IRS of failing to properly audit "at least $158 million in payments that Black made to Epstein between 2012 and 2017 for complex tax-related transactions." Wyden urged the Justice Department to subpoena Epstein-related records from Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Deutsche Bank AG in regards to his financial relationship with Black.[27][48][49]
Sexual misconduct accusations
In March 2021, Guzel Ganieva claimed in a series of tweets that "I was sexually harassed and abused by [Black] for years [and ultimately] forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement under duress". Black stated that he had engaged in a consensual affair with her.[50][51] The matter has resulted in lawsuits and countersuits.[52][53] Ganieva further alleged that Black introduced her to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and tried to force her to have sex with him.[54] Ganieva's lawsuit against Black was dismissed in May 2023.[55]
The law firm that represented Ganieva also represented another accuser, Cheri Pierson, who accused Black of raping her in 2002 in Jeffrey Epstein's mansion in New York City.[56] Black denied these claims.[57] On July 25, 2023, a lawsuit was filed against Black, alleging that he raped a 16-year-old girl with autism and Down syndrome in Epstein's Manhattan townhouse in 2002.[58][59] Black's attorney called the accusations "frivolous and sanctionable".[60] Pierson discontinued her lawsuit against Black in February 2024.[61]
Book publisher
In 2012, Black acquired Phaidon Press, a fine art books publishing house.[62]
Art collection
The Scream by Edvard Munch
In May 2012, Black purchased one of the four versions of Edvard Munch's The Scream. He paid $119.9 million for the pastel, then the highest price ever paid for a work of art.[63] In September 2012, the Museum of Modern Art announced the work would be exhibited for a six-month period starting in October.[64]
In June 2013, it was revealed that Black had purchased Head of a Young Apostle, an 11-inch-wide (28 cm) work by Raphael for £29 million after a four-party bidding war.[65]
On December 22, 2015, it was reported that Black purchased at auction a complete set of the Daniel Bomberg Babylonian Talmud for $9.3 million.[66] According to a press release from the Sotheby's auction house, the sale was "a new world auction record for any piece of Judaica."[67]
In June 2016, a lawsuit over the Picasso sculpture Bust of a Woman (Marie-Thérèse) between the advisory firm Pelham Europe and art gallery owner Larry Gagosian was settled. Pelham Europe, an agent for a member of Qatar's royal family, and Gagosian, who had resold the bust to Black, both claimed ownership. The case was settled by Maya Widmaier-Picasso, the owner of the sculpture. The settlement included Black getting the sculpture and Widmaier Picasso paying Pelham an undisclosed amount.[68]
Philanthropy
Black is a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art, the Jewish Museum, the Asia Society, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Mount Sinai Hospital, the Cardozo School of Law, and the Vail Valley Foundation.[12]
Through the Debra and Leon Black Family Foundation, he provided $7.5 million to establish a fellowship program for U.S. military personnel and veterans at Harvard Kennedy School.[69]
References
---
wiki 10 25
pollo Global Management, Inc. is an American asset management firm that primarily invests in alternative assets.[2][3][1] As of 2025, the company had $840 billion of assets under management, including $392 billion invested in credit, including mezzanine capital, hedge funds, non-performing loans, and collateralized loan obligations, $99 billion invested in private equity, and $46.2 billion invested in real assets, which includes real estate and infrastructure. The company invests money on behalf of pension funds, financial endowments, and sovereign wealth funds, as well as other institutional and individual investors.[1]
Apollo was founded in 1990 by Leon Black, Josh Harris, and Marc Rowan, former investment bankers at the defunct Drexel Burnham Lambert. The company is headquartered in the Solow Building in New York City,[1] with offices across North America, Europe, and Asia.[4] Founder and CEO Leon Black resigned as CEO in 2021 in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations and revelations that he had paid $158 million to Jeffrey Epstein.
In addition to its private funds, Apollo operates Apollo Investment Corporation (AIC), a US-domiciled publicly traded, private-equity, closed-end fund and Business Development Company. AIC provides mezzanine debt, senior secured loans, and equity investments to middle-market companies, including public companies, although it historically has not invested in companies controlled by Apollo's private-equity funds.[5][6]
In June 2024, Apollo Global Management ranked 29th in Private Equity International's PEI 300 ranking among the world's largest private equity firms.[7]
Apollo, originally referred to as Apollo Advisors, was founded after the collapse of Drexel Burnham Lambert in 1990 by Leon Black, the former head of Drexel's mergers and acquisitions department, along with Josh Harris and Marc Rowan.[8] Tony Ressler, another former senior Drexel executive, was also among the firm's original members.[9][10][11][12]
Within six months after the collapse of Drexel, Apollo launched Apollo Investment Fund L.P., the first of its private-equity investment funds, formed to make investments in distressed companies. Apollo raised around $400 million of investor commitments based on Leon Black's reputation as a prominent lieutenant of Michael Milken and a key player in the buyout boom of the 1980s.[9]
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A slate of emails collected by the New York Times reveals a period of grinding stress between Jeffrey Epstein and his biggest financial supporter, billionaire Leon Black.
The chairman of the board of Apollo Global Management had been backing away from paying Epstein $40 million a year for various advisory work after Epstein’s first Florida indictment related to charges of underage sex.
“So Mr. Epstein threw a tantrum,” the Times reports. “ … The typo-strewn tirade was one of dozens of previously unreported emails … in which Mr. Epstein hectored Mr. Black, at times demanding tens of millions of dollars beyond the $150 million he had already been paid.”
And the pressure campaign appeared to work. Black continued to fork over tens of millions of dollars in fees and loans. After Epstein served jail time for soliciting prostitution from a minor, many of his contacts backed away. But not Black, who “kept Epstein afloat for years,” according to the Times. Eventually Black was pushed out of the private equity firm he co-founded over his ties to Epstein.
“The two men had been personally entwined for more than two decades. When a former girlfriend accused Mr. Black of sexual assault, he turned to Mr. Epstein for advice about paying her millions of dollars to keep it quiet,” said the Times, according to court records. “Another woman said in a lawsuit that Mr. Black had raped her at Mr. Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. She eventually dropped the lawsuit.”
“And, for reasons that are unknown, Mr. Black wired hundreds of thousands of dollars to at least three women who were associated with Mr. Epstein,” the Times added, also according to court documents and notes taken by congressional investigators that were shared with The Times.
In one email, a frustrated Epstein boasted of his protective services to Black: "If you reflect on your financial life, you have been kept safe, had remarkable results and no disasters."
Their intimate tangle of machinations might explain how Epstein could berate Black so abusively in letters that sometimes referred to his children as “r-------” for supposedly making a mess of his estate.
“The emails … sent in 2015 and 2016 to Mr. Black through his personal assistant, as well as to a handful of his advisers, show another dimension of Mr. Epstein’s cruelty,” the Times reports. “While he was known for ingratiating himself with the rich and powerful, he could also veer into nastiness and was willing to turn the screws on his biggest client.”
Read the New York Times report at this link.
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AM PROS
FOur and a half years ago, Department of Government Efficiency co-czar Brad Smith stumbled on a counterintuitive revelation: The most effective way to slash federal health care spending involved drastically raising Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates for hospital care.
:{At the time, Smith was running something called the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, an obscure off-the-books laboratory created by the Affordable Care Act for experimenting with “alternative payment models”—neoliberal for “larger sums with less accountability.” In its ten years of operation, CMMI had spent more than $10 billion testing various methods of tweaking reimbursement standards in (theoretical) hopes of improving health care outcomes for lower costs:{. They had worked with UnitedHealth, Aetna, Molina,}: and other insurers in 13 states to reward primary care physicians who administered more preventative care and collected more specific data on their patients.
They’d worked with more than 100 hospitals and mega-practices to bundle payments for complex patients, in hopes of lowering the ultimate cost of treating chronic illnesses. CMMI had spent some $10 billion testing out dozens more schemes, nearly all of which subscribed to an ideology called “value-based care,” in which the central flaw of American health care is “volume-based” fee-for-service compensation schemes that incentivize “overutilization” of the health care system, and so the natural “solution” involves the government paying health care providers and various intermediaries to take steps designed to decrease said “utilization.”}:
Value-based care grew especially important during the Obama years, because the ACA mandated that insurance companies spend a minimum of 85 percent of patients’ premium dollars on “care,” wiping out profit drivers like the mandatory insurance policies UnitedHealth sold to college students that often boasted medical loss ratios as low as 10 percent. Insurers in turn began to focus their energies around their highest-revenue patients: seniors with a lot of complex health issues who were enrolled in the private Medicare offerings known as Medicare Advantage. They would soon buy up the medical practices, home health agencies, and surgery centers that treated these patients, in a move that enabled them to at once “align incentives” (i.e., control more of the medical decisions they were paying for), park the excess profit margins they weren’t allowed to report on their insurance sides, and find more Medicare patients to convert to MA plans.
Brad Smith was a value-based guy. He’d gotten in on the ground floor of the craze during the first term of the Obama administration, while helming the education reform foundation of former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), whose billionaire brother Tom Frist founded the hospital behemoth HCA, whose long history of unnecessary overtreatment of Medicare patients perhaps ironically gave birth to the value-based revolution. Together, the two had built a home health care business with more than 650 employees that they had just sold for $440 million to health insurer Anthem.
Smith had been working as the chief operating officer of Anthem’s value-based business when he’d been tapped for the CMMI gig by one Adam Boehler, another value-based evangelist who often talked about how he wanted to “blow up” the “volume-based” ancien régime. Still, doctors, especially the types of doctors who complained about Obamacare and voted for Trump, hated value-based care, because it required spending way too much money on software and far more hours doing paperwork than the incentive payments could justify. Smith’s boss, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) head Seema Verma, was value-based skeptical, and wanted to know whether CMMI’s programs were actually working as “intended.” So Smith ordered his staff to conduct a financial analysis of all 54 programs CMMI had bankrolled to test out the new approach to health care.
Smith and a 24-year-old deputy from his Nashville VC firm are said to be building the vision of what will replace everything that DOGE has eradicated.
The verdict was unambiguous: Value-based care was a bust. For two of its biggest programs, CMMI had spent $7 billion more than it had saved, just from compensating all the various intermediaries that had administered the trials. The reasons for this were twofold, say two individuals who worked on value-based care policy for the Obama administration: One, CMMI and CMS invariably outsourced the management of the trials to “venture capital or private equity firms or nonprofits where the CEO is making millions of dollars” that typically alienated and underpaid the clinicians they were ostensibly seeking to incentivize; and two, most of the policymakers involved were too preoccupied with “how they were going to monetize their expertise” to design programs that might actually save CMS money.
Lending credibility to that analysis, the shining star of the small agency’s roster of reform measures was the “Maryland All-Payer Model,” a state-operated system originally devised in the early 1970s by which an independent commission fixed flat hospital prices for the state that every payer—from Blue Cross to Medicaid—is expected to pay. The Maryland Model, which was modified in 2014 and discarded in favor of a more complex, almost European-style “global budgeting” system in 2018, is a rabbit hole with its own unique advantages and disadvantages, but it is decisively notvalue-based care, and sources familiar with CMMI said its affiliation with the initiative was something of a fluke, especially given that Medicare conclusively pays far higher rates for medical care in Maryland than anywhere else (though yearly per capita expenditures are higher in Florida). And yet the Maryland system saved CMS $1 billion over just five years tracked by CMMI, likely in large part by lacking the administrative middlemen and arbitrageurs in the system and the waste and fraud that tend to accompany them.
This analysis might have made for an embarrassing news cycle for CMMI and all the affiliated grifters who had cashed in on the value-based boom, like Smith’s predecessor Boehler, a college roommate of Jared Kushner’s who would soon sell his home health agency for $3.5 billion to UnitedHealth, or CMMI founding director Patrick Conway, who’d left the agency a few years earlier to become the richly remunerated CEO of Blue Cross in North Carolina, where he had rolled out a mandatory value-based care regime in conjunction with the CMMI-friendly healthtech Aledade, and recently been charged with driving under the influence after crashing his car with his two elementary school–aged daughters inside.
Instead, they were all saved by the pandemic, during which Smith was detailed to the Trump inner circle for assistance with various pandemic response efforts, and ended up becoming close to Kushner himself, according to The New York Times. By the time he returned to CMMI to write up the results of his staff’s analysis in The New England Journal of Medicine, CMS had rained down hundreds of billions of bailout dollars on the health care system, and no one even bothered making hay of the news that the agency had wasted $10 billion testing out cost-cutting ideas that didn’t pan out.
In one of his last acts at the agency, Smith introduced a new program called the Geographic Direct Contracting Model, or “Geo,” by which all remaining traditional Medicare beneficiaries were slated to be automatically assigned on the basis of their residence to a value-based care organization to which CMS would pay a flat annual fee to assume their health care “risk.” Geo contractors would be virtually unregulated, though they would be held to a medical loss ratio minimum requiring them to spend at least 60 percent of their revenues on care. The Biden administration scrapped Geo in early 2021, but kept a slightly less radical Smith plan with a similar goal of stealth total privatization after renaming it ACO REACH, for “Accountable Care Organization Realizing Equity, Access, and Community Health.”
Smith moved back to Nashville and took the helm at two new value-based care upstarts, a Medicaid home health intermediary called CareBridge and a rural Medicare Advantage play called Main Street Health. In late October, he sold the former to Elevance, the new name of the insurer to whom he’d sold his first home health company, Aspire. This time, the head count was lower—fewer than 500 employees—but the price tag was much, much bigger, at $2.7 billion.
A putative class action lawsuit filed last month in Florida by a “clinical assessor” for CareBridge alleges that she and other low-level employees were required to work 45 hours a week for only 40 hours’ pay, and dozens of negative reviews on job sites suggest assessors work as many as 20 extra hours without pay. Worse, employees say the job mostly consists of “managers … demanding that you drastically cut caregiver hours for people who desperately need someone in their home.”
“This is a greed-driven company that is preying on our nation’s most vulnerable and poorest people. If you can sleep at night and live with yourself while harming the poor and disabled during the day, this job is for you,” reads one review on Glassdoor. “If CareBridge is the future of healthcare then we heading to a sad state of affairs,” reads another.
Just months after the CareBridge deal, Smith was reported to be hanging around Mar-a-Lago with Steve Davis, the longtime Elon Musk loyalist who ran the hostile takeover of Twitter. Underneath Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who would soon depart, Smith and Davis are said to be the real operating leaders of DOGE, with the latter playing the bad cop masterminding the scorched-earth shutdowns and cuts, while Smith and a 24-year-old deputy from his Nashville VC firm are said to be building the vision of what will replace everything that DOGE has eradicated, according to a source familiar with his recruiting efforts. CMMI, a highly unusual agency with a ten-year, self-renewing budget outside the appropriations process and an extraordinary ability to grant waivers from the statutes governing CMS, including fraud and kickback statutes, is said to be a model for how Musk wants DOGE to reimagine the federal government.
As further evidence of that, Smith’s predecessor as CMMI director, Boehler, whose brand-new venture capital firm Rubicon Founders last spring raised more than a billion dollars for its latest fund and also groomed Trump’s newest CMMI director, 33 year-old Abe Sutton, is currently working as Trump’s special presidential envoy for hostage affairs. Boehler got his start in the health care business as a medical debt collector, first at a firm called MedeFinance and then with a shadowy empire called Accretive, which was banned from the state of Minnesota in 2012 after an employee left a laptop in a taxi that revealed the company had essentially seized the operations of a Minneapolis nonprofit hospital system and was using confidential health records, collected under the guise of value-based care modeling, to manipulate patients into coughing up large cash payments for hospital services to “embedded” collection agents, sometimes while under the influence of powerful anesthesia.
The obscure agency Boehler launched after leaving CMMI, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation—best known for its failures to do much of anything with its nine-figure budget for bolstering supply chains during the pandemic after an ill-fated $765 million loan it made to Eastman Kodak was shelved after revelations of insider trading—was reported on Wednesday to be DOGE’s designated “replacement” for the U.S. Agency for International Development, under the leadership of venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale and Ben Black. The latter is the son of disgraced billionaire Leon Black, an accused sexual predator who was forced to leave the private equity juggernaut after revelations that he had wired nearly $200 million to Jeffrey Epstein, whom he considered his best friend, in the years before Epstein’s death. A January Substack post by Lonsdale and Black on their plans for “disrupting” the $43 billion USAID budget is light on specifics but advocates defunding nongovernmental organizations to pursue an “investment-driven model focused on strategic project finance initiatives.”
Foreign aid, of course, is a rounding error compared to the multitrillion-dollar health care budget, in which the *Prospect estimates a team of forensic accountants might easily find as much as a half-trillion dollars in waste annually, roughly $100 billion of that in Medicare Advantage overpayments alone. (Obama had the chance to clamp down on the obvious MA grift, but abruptly reversed course in 2014.) In a 2021 VID] Zoom
on the tenth anniversary of the agency and the future of “value-based care” moderated by ubiquitous value-based care venture capitalist Ann Lamont, Smith, Boehler, and CMMI founder Conway, now the CEO of UnitedHealth’s OptumRx division, held forth almost giddily on the rosy “future of value-based care,” with Boehler jokingly describing Conway as the agency’s “Adam Neumann,” the self-aggrandizing WeWork founder who burned some $20 billion in venture capital funding. At one point, Smith brought up his analysis, commending the agency for making “value-based care” such an inescapable industry buzzword but acknowledging that only five of the group’s 54 experiments had delivered any cost savings whatsoever. Lamont quickly changed the subject. “Imagine in a few years, we receive 90 percent of payments in value-based commitments. How do we get there?”
This probably wasn’t how any of them imagined it going down, but with Smith running the rogue operation that is apparently running the country, it seems likely we’ll get there.
Tags
Health & Social Policy CMS Medicare health insurance Affordable Care Act Obama Administration privatization federal government DOGE Elon Musk Donald Trump Trump transition
Maureen Tkacik is investigations editor at the Prospect and a senior fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project.
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DUCK 3 26
New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com › 2025 › 10 › 18 › business › jeffrey-epstein-leon-black.html
Jeffrey Epstein's Angry Emails to Billionaire Leon Black - The New York ...
Oct 18, 2025New emails show how Mr. Epstein pressured Leon Black, his longtime friend and patron, to fork over millions for financial services.
NBC News
Leon Black, billionaire financier, to be deposed in Epstein victims ...
Mar 12, 2026Leon Black, former CEO of Apollo Global Management and an associate of Jeffrey Epstein, was ordered to be deposed in a lawsuit brought by women who allege that Bank of America facilitated and ...
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com › us-news › 2026 › mar › 03 › leon-black-lawsuit-epstein
Epstein-linked Leon Black waged bid to 'silence' law firm and accusers ...
Mar 4, 2026A law firm that represented multiple women who accused former Jeffrey Epstein associate Leon Black of sexual misconduct alleged in a Manhattan civil suit on Monday that the powerful financier ...
USA Today
Leon Black may be deposed in Epstein accusers' Bank of America lawsuit
Mar 11, 2026The billionaire could be deposed in a lawsuit brought by women who accuse Bank of America of facilitating sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein.
Times Now
Who Is Leon Black And Why Does He Appear In The Epstein Files?
Feb 17, 2026Who Is Leon Black And Why Does He Appear In The Epstein Files? Authored by: Simran Sukhnani Updated Feb 17, 2026, 18:09 IST Lifetouch, a major U.S. school photography company, is facing scrutiny after its owner, billionaire Leon Black, appeared in newly released Epstein files, prompting parental demands for transparency and stronger student data protections.
Business Insider
Leon Black Assault Claims Investigated by Prosecutors: Epstein Files ...
Feb 10, 2026The Epstein files reveal that prosecutors were looking into misconduct claims against the billionaire and former Apollo CEO Black as far back as 2019.
Reuters
Leon Black deposition in Epstein accusers' lawsuit against Bank of ...
Mar 11, 2026The lawsuit alleges Bank of America ignored suspicious payments by Black to Epstein.
National Day Today
Bank of America Settles Epstein Lawsuit - Manhattan Today
2 days agoBank of America has tentatively settled a lawsuit claiming it ignored suspicious financial transactions involving Jeffrey Epstein while he was sexually abusing hundreds of girls and women. The proposed settlement was revealed in filings in Manhattan federal court on Monday, the same day that billionaire financier Leon Black was originally scheduled to be deposed in the case.
CBS News
https://www.cbsnews.com › news › jeffrey-epstein-leon-black-emails
Epstein offered advice to billionaire facing accusation of sexual ...
Dec 16, 2025Documents released by Congress shed new light on Jeffrey Epstein's role in an attempt to help billionaire Leon Black squelch an accusation of sexual impropriety. Black, the co-founder of Apollo ...
Bloomberg
The Leon Black Files: Epstein Was a Fixer for Billionaire's Deepest ...
Feb 13, 2026The Leon Black Files: Epstein Was a Fixer for Billionaire's Deepest Secrets The notorious sex offender helped Black manage an angry mistress and IRS questions about gifts to another woman
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- ...
Glenn Greenwald | Substack
https://greenwald.substack.com › p › the-epstein-files-the-blackmail-of
The Epstein Files: The Blackmail of Billionaire Leon Black and Epstein ...
Feb 16, 2026Black's downfall — despite paying tens of millions in extortion demands — illustrates how potent and valuable intimate secrets are in Epstein's world of oligarchs and billionaires.
TrueHoop
https://www.truehoop.com › p › leon-black-talks-jeffrey-epstein
Leon Black talks Jeffrey Epstein - by Henry Abbott
Apr 5, 2024Leon Black's dad bought United Fruit, then tumbled to his death (reportedly suicide) from its high-rise offices under suspicious circumstances. Leon's business life brought many of his dad's deep-pocketed associates into the tangled web that Milken wove. Apollo bought one of the CIA's favorite contractors, Blackwater.
teamfsociety.org
https://teamfsociety.org › en › leon-black-epstein
Leon Black, Jeffrey Epstein & the Deutsche Bank
Why did Leon Black decide to continue his business relationship with Epstein? Another interesting connection: in 2016, Apollo buys BLACKWATER. Let us recall that the CIA subcontracts BW, a private military company belonging to Constellis Group (a military company that in 2016 will be under the control of the investment fund Apollo Global ...
The National
Controversy continues over MoMa PS1 protest as artists call out ...
Artists are protesting the affiliation between Leon Black, the chairman of MoMA, and Constellis Group, the private military contractor formerly known as Blackwater
- [
Hyperallergic
https://hyperallergic.com › artists-call-for-leon-blacks-removal-moma-jeffrey-epstein
Over 150 Artists Call for Leon Black's Removal From ... - Hyperallergic
We note that Leon Black's corruption extends far as his "investment" firm is also the owner of Constellis, formerly known as Blackwater, a private military firm which was banned from ...
Glenn Greenwald | Substack
https://greenwald.substack.com › p › the-epstein-files-the-blackmail-of
The Epstein Files: The Blackmail of Billionaire Leon Black and Epstein ...
Feb 16, 2026Black's downfall — despite paying tens of millions in extortion demands — illustrates how potent and valuable intimate secrets are in Epstein's world of oligarchs and billionaires.
TrueHoop
https://www.truehoop.com › p › leon-black-talks-jeffrey-epstein
Leon Black talks Jeffrey Epstein - by Henry Abbott
Apr 5, 2024Leon Black's dad bought United Fruit, then tumbled to his death (reportedly suicide) from its high-rise offices under suspicious circumstances. Leon's business life brought many of his dad's deep-pocketed associates into the tangled web that Milken wove. Apollo bought one of the CIA's favorite contractors, Blackwater.
teamfsociety.org
https://teamfsociety.org › en › leon-black-epstein
Leon Black, Jeffrey Epstein & the Deutsche Bank
Why did Leon Black decide to continue his business relationship with Epstein? Another interesting connection: in 2016, Apollo buys BLACKWATER. Let us recall that the CIA subcontracts BW, a private military company belonging to Constellis Group (a military company that in 2016 will be under the control of the investment fund Apollo Global ...
The National
Controversy continues over MoMa PS1 protest as artists call out ...
Artists are protesting the affiliation between Leon Black, the chairman of MoMA, and Constellis Group, the private military contractor formerly known as Blackwater
Hyperallergic
https://hyperallergic.com › artists-call-for-leon-blacks-removal-moma-jeffrey-epstein
Over 150 Artists Call for Leon Black's Removal From ... - Hyperallergic
We note that Leon Black's corruption extends far as his "investment" firm is also the owner of Constellis, formerly known as Blackwater, a private military firm which was banned from ...
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