Here is a transcript, edited for clarity:
Good morning. As you’re watching this, it is Friday morning, March 27th. As I’m recording it, it is Thursday afternoon of the 26th, 4:14 PM. The first really nice spring day we’ve had here in the Hudson Valley. So I decided to take this outdoors.
I don’t have a lot to say this week. I mean, everything’s just so crazy. I think everybody that voted for Trump should be strapped down to a chair and forced to watch the entirety of the press conference about the war that Donald gave Thursday, over and over again on a loop until they admit defeat and that they were wrong. That’s it. Just watch this guy.
I know we’ve exhaustedly discussed his dealings with Epstein, his dealings with the Kremlin, his dealings with Roy Cohn, his dealings with the mob, all this other stuff, but at the end of the day, he’s also really stupid and doesn’t grasp geopolitics at all. And the entire world is going to feel the brunt of this, in really noticeable ways, real soon.
But that’s not what I want to talk about this morning. I want to talk about a couple of Epstein revelations that came out. The New York Times this week, on March 23rd, ran a story by Matthew Goldstein, Lisa Silver -Greenberg, Steve Eder, and David Enrich about Leon Black and Leon Black’s relationship with Epstein.
Now, Leon Black is a guy who runs this Apollo Capital investment firm, whatever the hell it is—a guy that just has grotesque amounts of money at his disposal and does whatever he wants. He’s also, I guess, pretty involved with the art world, which is its own thing.
[papers ruffling; sorry for the noise]
But one of the things that came out of the article is interesting in that it gives us a lens through which we can view the Trump-Epstein relationship. I want to read a little bit from this article. Again, this is from the New York Times, March 23rd, 2026:
Mr. Black, that’s Leon Black, paid Mr. Epstein, that’s Jeffrey Epstein, 170—one-seven-zero—$170 million over six years for what Black has said were tax and estate-planning services. The sum dwarfed what elite law or accounting firms would have charged for similar work, baffling both his Wall Street peers and investigators on Capitol Hill.
“Baffling?” I wouldn’t choose that word. But anyway, moving on.
The millions of pages of Epstein-related emails and other documents that the Justice Department released this year offer a potential explanation for the size of the payments. Epstein essentially served as a fixer whose services went beyond modernizing Mr. Black’s finances or reducing his taxes, according to a New York Times review of those records—which is a little bit like me saying, “according to a Greg Olear review of these records.”
Mr. Epstein suggested ways to obscure millions of dollars that Mr. Black paid to women, as well as to Mr. Epstein himself. He brainstormed about how to avoid taxes on some of the payments. He took credit for diffusing a government audit of a woman to whom Mr. Black had paid millions of dollars. He planned ways to surveil, intimidate, and silence another woman who was threatening to publicly accuse Mr. Black of abuse. He even counseled Mr. Black to separate from his wife after she learned of his infidelity.
Mr. Black, that’s Leon Black, paid about $20 million to a dozen women, at least some of whom he’d had sexual relationships with, according to the recently released files and notes taken by congressional investigators and shared with the Times.
Whew.
Mr. Epstein was involved in figuring out ways to dispense a significant portion of that money. Epstein summed it up to Black in a 2017 email. Epstein’s job, as he saw it, was partly about, quote, “saving you from yourself.”
So the long and the short of that is that, as it says in the article, Epstein was a fixer. This guy, Leon Black, had a problem, or a lot of problems; he came to Epstein and Epstein fixed the problems. There was a Russian woman named Guzel Ganieva—I’m probably pronouncing it wrong—who had a relationship with Black for years, and then it looks like she was trying to maybe blackmail him or extort him or whatever word you want to use—allegedly. And Black asked Epstein for help, and Epstein helped. Epstein helped by emailing his contact at the FSB in St. Petersburg to lean on the woman and maybe convince her that, you know, this was not a good idea.
This is the email that he sent. This is in July 2015. He sends this to a guy—Sergei Belyakov—who is in charge of the St. Petersburg Investment Fund and also a former FSB guy. You know, a spy.
How are you, I need a favor, there is a russian girl from moscow. Period. Not good at punctuation, Mr. Epstein. Guzel Ganieva. she is attempting to blackmail a group of powerful biznessman [sic] in New York, it is bad for business for everyone involved. she arrived new york saturday of last week staying at the Four Seasons. on 57 street. Suggestions?
Now, over at the Dossier Center, which is Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s outfit that looks into the Russian corruption, they had this story months ago—New York Times doesn’t mention that—but they wrote about this months ago with this email, this guy Belyakov who Epstein leaned on. And it made the problem go away.
That’s the point—it made the problem go away. So, okay. The takeaway from that, according to the—what is it?—according to a Greg Olear review of the records…the takeaway from that is that when these rich guys had a problem, they went to Epstein. They just called Epstein and said, “Hey, help,” you know? Like in the song, “Lawyers, Guns, and Money.” You know: “Dad, get me out of this.” Dad was Epstein in this case, right?
Now, why is this interesting to me? Because who cares about Leon Black and their exact nature of the relationship? I mean, obviously they’re doing horrible things together. The allegations against Black are really awful. And, you know, he knew Epstein for a long time and remained friends with him in spite of all the bad things that he was up to. So make of that what you will.
Now, on March 11th and 12th, which is couple of weeks ago now, Richard Kahn—it’s a good name for an Epstein associate, Kahn. Kahn man, right? He is the CPA that Epstein did business with for years and years and years. And he testified before the House Committee chaired by James Comer. And he messed things up a little bit, I think. He wasn’t consistent in his answers, as the Democrats pointed out.
So this was released by the Oversight Democrats on March 13th. I’m quoting again here:
On March 11th, 2026, Mr. Richard Kahn testified in response to Representative Ro Khanna that “Jane Doe 4,” whom Representative Khanna described as a woman who made allegations against President Donald Trump, had received a settlement from the Epstein Estate.
Now, put a pin in that. We’re gonna get back to that in a minute. Then...
Later in the deposition, when Oversight Democratic staff attorneys again asked about settlements involving Jane Doe 4, Khan’s attorney sought clarification about the individual’s identity. After consulting with his client, Khan’s attorney stated on the record that Mr. Khan’s earlier testimony had been mistaken and that neither he nor Mr. Khan recognized Jane Doe 4 as someone who had filed a claim against the Epstein estate.
On March 12th—otherwise known as the next day—Kahn’s attorney told Oversight Democratic staff attorneys that Jane Doe 4 had in fact filed a claim against the estate, but that the claim had been denied and no settlement had been reached. This statement was also inaccurate.
During a second call that day, Kahn’s attorney said he could no longer stand by the claim that no settlement had been reached with Jane Doe IV and that he could neither confirm nor deny whether a settlement had occurred.
So this is a guy who’s losing his memory in real time. But what it looks like to me—again, according to research by Greg Olear—what it looks like to me is that Kahn said something that he didn’t mean to say—i.e. that settlements were paid to women by Epstein on Trump’s behalf—and then realized he shouldn’t have said that, and then sort of backtracked. Then he backtracked too far, and then he un-backtracked. He caught up. He didn’t catch up. I don’t know what the word for that is
But the point is, if it’s true—the first thing Kahn said—if it’s true that the Epstein estate paid out a settlement to a woman who was accusing Trump, that’s kind of a big deal. That means that Epstein was doing the same thing for Trump that he was doing for Leon Black. He was serving as a fixer. He was figuring out ways to dispense money without it being connected to Trump himself.
And I think this is the key takeaway here. This is a guy who was a fixer, and he was a fixer for Leon Black—allegedly, and according to a New York Times review of documents—and apparently he was also a fixer to Trump, according to the first of four things that Richard Kahn said, which I think probably is the most accurate of the statements. That’s my own opinion. Who knows?
The point is it gives us some clarity into the relationship here. Trump was still going to Epstein for fixing problems pretty late—well after the time that he said he threw him out of his life and threw him out of Mar-a-Lago or whatever. Even though he never actually threw him out of Mar-a-Lago. Remember Dan Goldman put that into the record too, that there was no throwing out of Mar-a-Lago. That was just a lie.
So it looks to me like Epstein was a fixer. He was a fixer for Leon Black, and he was a fixer for Donald Trump. So what that means going forward? I don’t know. I’m sure he did a lot of other things, because that’s what spies do.
But we know now, and we can see that the relationship between Epstein and Leon Black is somewhat analogous to the relationship between Epstein and Donald Trump. So what we can learn about Leon Black, we can probably by—what is it, the transitive property?—apply it also to Donald.
Just something to keep an eye on in the days and weeks ahead, assuming we don’t, you know, go into full scale nuclear war in the meantime. It’s just unbelievable, unbelievable.
Anyway, I just wanted to flag that because it’s one of these little subtle things that could get lost in the shuffle. Maybe it’s not important at all, but it seems to me that it clarifies something. It clarifies a relationship between these two guys—what they were really up to.
Now the real question is: If Jeffrey Epstein was fixing stuff for Donald Trump, what was Donald Trump doing for Jeffrey Epstein?
Until next time, we shall prevail!
TONIGHT
Join me and LB live on The Five 8 at 8pm ET:
And on Sunday, I will be up in the North Country with LB, where we will do a live event with the Adirondack Voters for Change. If you’re in the neighborhood, do drop by!
