Billionaire Leon Black is accused in a new lawsuit of raping a woman in a "brutal attack" at the Manhattan home of the late Jeffrey Epstein 20 years ago, according to The Hill. Black has ties to former President Donald Trump.
In the lawsuit, Cheri Pierson names both Black and the estate of the late Epstein as defendants in the lawsuit, which was filed in New York court on Monday.
Pierson claims that Epstein arranged for her to give Leon Black a massage at Epstein's New York City mansion, which she agreed to in exchange for $300 that she "desperately needed" to care for her young daughter. Pierson alleges that instead, Black raped her in a "brutal attack" that left her "swollen, torn, and bleeding."
Via The Hill:
Black, the co-founder of the private equity firm Apollo, stepped down from his position as chairman and CEO of the firm after news broke of his financial relationship with Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 before he could go to trial on sex trafficking charges.
I knew his name sounded familiar, so I Googled Trump and Leon Black, knowing that he had some relationship with the guy. In 2018, Black told senators about Trump's 1996 trip to Moscow.
Via Vanity Fair from 2020:
According to the recently released 966-page fifth volume of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report, "Counterintelligence Threats and Vulnerabilities," Black was on the Trump trip, along with David Geovanis and Bennett LeBow, two men Black knew from his days as head of mergers and acquisitions at Drexel Burnham Lambert, the long defunct Wall Street investment bank. After Drexel blew up in 1990, Geovanis moved to Moscow in 1991, working as a representative of LeBow, the onetime corporate raider who was a longtime client of Black's and junk-bond king Michael Milken's at Drexel. In Moscow, according to the report, Geovanis worked as LeBow's representative, "developing and investing in real estate "for a Russian-American joint venture known as Liggett-Ducat and for something called Brookemil, Ltd.
This whole thing smells funny.
According to the Senate report, Geovanis was assigned to show Trump "around town" and "take him to dinner." In his deposition, Black said that Geovanis had "very good social skills" but was "more junior" and "probably not as serious analytically." He said Geovanis, who Black had not spoken to in 15 years, knew the Moscow "geography, since he lived there," knew "various people," and had developed "various relationships."
Lordy, there's a tape.
There is a short video from the Moscow trip that surfaced last year. And a photograph, shared in the Senate's report, shows Black and Trump together with Geovanis and Geovanis's then wife. Black told the senators he did not recall "any compromising behavior" during the trip. (He also did not recall what was going on in the photograph.) He said he did remember going to a concert with Trump, and then to a "discotheque," where they met other people whom Black could not recall. Black, however, added that he and Trump "might have gone to a strip club together."
Black has also met one-on-one with Vladimir Putin. And guys, are you getting pee pee tape vibes from all of this? Is it just me?
