Billionaire who paid Epstein millions slaps top investigator with suit as Dems win gavel

A billionaire who spent years paying Jeffrey Epstein has gone after a congressman who publicly tied him to the abuse of women.

Leon Black, the co-founder of private equity giant Apollo Global Management, filed a federal defamation lawsuit Wednesday against Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), the Associated Press reported. The complaint, lodged in the Southern District of New York, seeks a jury trial and $7.25 million in damages.

At issue are remarks Garcia made in a TV appearance weeks after Black sat for a voluntary June interview with the House Oversight Committee, where Black insisted he knew nothing about the sex trafficking network Epstein ran.

In that appearance, Garcia declared that "Leon Black is at the center of Jeffrey Epstein's crimes." He added that he had spoken with survivors who "credibly named Leon Black as someone that was involved in direct abuse of women." The congressman also said Black was among the last people to interact with Epstein before he died by suicide in prison.

Black's legal team claims those statements were false and malicious. The complaint accuses Garcia of "knowing lies" and alleges Black has faced threats to his safety, a flood of hostile calls, emails and social media posts, and damage to his business and philanthropy.

Garcia's office did not immediately respond to the AP's requests for comment.

The suit arrives just weeks after the House voted to hold Black in contempt of Congress for blowing off the Oversight Committee's subpoenas, which demanded his testimony along with any nondisclosure agreements tied to the Epstein investigation. Garcia hailed the September vote as "an important step toward justice and accountability."

Black's attorneys have repeatedly painted the committee's interest in their client as congressional overreach and maintain he was unaware of any of Epstein's criminal behavior.

The panel had also sought to question other high-profile figures in its sprawling Epstein inquiry, including former President Bill Clinton and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

A review commissioned by Black's former firm, which he left in 2021, found he paid Epstein $158 million from 2012 to 2017, well after Epstein's 2008 guilty plea for soliciting prostitution from a minor. The review characterized the payments as compensation for tax and estate planning services.