It’s a Beast of a time in Washington. Donald Trump’s D.C. reality show is full of new characters, plot twists, and cliffhangers, and the Daily Beast will navigate you through it. The 47th president won’t need to drain The Swamp. It’s all leaking here…
The Epstein fallout has fractured MAGA and created a political headache for Donald Trump who has pondered aloud: “What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’” But one “boy” in particular who he might want to know about is billionaire investor Leon Black.
In 2018, as Congress probed foreign interference in the 2016 election, Black gave evidence about being with Trump during a trip to Russia in the naughty ‘90s, where they attended a concert, a discotheque and, according to Black’s sworn testimony, “might have been in a strip club together.” Now however, The Swamp can reveal Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice is facing pointed questions about Black’s ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein—and what precisely Bondi is doing about them.
“I don’t blame anybody who says they smell a cover-up,” Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee tells The Swamp.
Black, the former head of Apollo Global Management, paid $170 million to Epstein which he claimed was for tax and estate planning advice. He’s consistently denied any knowledge or involvement in Epstein’s criminal activities.
But a copy of a 2023 settlement agreement he signed with the U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General’s office acknowledged that “Jeffrey Epstein used the money Black paid him to partially fund his operations in the Virgin Islands.”
For the avoidance of doubt, those “operations” were Epstein’s “pedo island,” Little St. James, where he abused underage girls. The document also shows that Black agreed to pay $62.5 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2023 to be released from any potential claims arising out of the territory’s three-year investigation into Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.
The vast sums are now under scrutiny from Wyden, who smells something fishy at the DOJ—and it’s not just the caviar table where The Swamp spotted Black back in January during a VIP party for Trump’s inauguration.
Wyden called on the DOJ, the FBI and Treasury to investigate further if they really wanted to lift the veil on Epstein’s financial networks. “Attorney General Bondi is out in public saying there’s nothing more to investigate, but I know for a fact that the Trump administration is sitting on a big file full of actionable information dealing with Epstein’s financing network and operations,” Wyden tells us.
Not surprisingly, the White House declined to comment when asked about the matter. Black declined to comment through his representatives, but addressed Epstein’s social prowess in a fascinating interview with Puck News earlier this year, where he recalled how he’d pop over to Epstein’s house for dinner, as did folks such as Woody Allen, Dick Cavett and, of course, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon.
“I’m not in any way, shape, or form defending Jeffrey,” Black was quoted as saying, rattling off a list of others who also knew the late sex offender, including Trump and former president Bill Clinton. “I’m defending me. I don’t believe any of these guys knew that Jeffrey was a pedophile. I certainly didn’t. I thought he was a fascinating guy.”
Hopefully this won’t make it uncomfortable for the financier’s son Ben Black, who Trump nominated to lead the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. He’s waiting for a Senate vote.
This exclusive extract from this week’s edition of The Swamp is just a taste of the delicious secrets we reveal every week. Sign up here to never miss an edition.
The Swamp is written by David Gardner, Farrah Tomazin, and Sarah Ewall-Wice.
