Welcome back to Dry Powder. I’m William D. Cohan, and I’ll be on the island for one more week. If you’re flying in, let’s grab lunch at the clam shack. If not, I’ll be back in Manhattan later this month.

In tonight’s issue, news and notes on a highly unusual development in the “Jane Doe” lawsuit against billionaire Apollo founder Leon Black. But first…

• Dimon fake news: Did Jamie Dimon, the exalted king of Wall Street and C.E.O. of JPMorgan Chase, really endorse Donald Trump for president on Friday, as the former president declared on his idiotic Truth Social account on Friday afternoon? “I don’t know anything about it,” Jamie supposedly replied shortly thereafter. Asked about the alleged endorsement before a campaign rally, Trump pretended that he knew nothing about the endorsement, according to the Times.

  Obviously, this all feels rather absurd, as usual. But, as you might recall, Dimon has been more Trump-friendly than other business leaders in his stratosphere. “Take a step back, be honest,” Jamie said about Trump at Davos in January. “He was kind of right about NATO, kind of right on immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Trade, tax reform worked. He was right about some of China.” In the months thereafter, quelle horreur, speculation started that perhaps Jamie was angling to become Trump’s treasury secretary. I’m not buying that—Jamie is too career-savvy and legacy-oriented, among other things. He also truly appears, like many of his ilk, to love his seat and the grandeur it confers. Still, as Gary Cohn knows, it can be hard to say no when the president-elect is calling offering you a job. Eager to hear what really happened, I reached out to Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign’s chief spokesman, for a little clarity. He replied 14 minutes later, “Who the fuck are you?”

Leon’s theory of the Epstein case was pretty much confirmed by a $5 million investigation by the Dechert law firm—produced for the board of directors of Apollo at Leon’s request—that was published in January 2021. After reviewing some 60,000 documents from a variety of sources, including Leon, his partners at Apollo, his lawyers at Paul Weiss, and text messages on his phone, the 22-page report concluded, in its first finding, that “Dechert has seen no evidence that Black or any employee of the Family Office or Apollo was involved in any way with Epstein’s criminal activities at any time. There is no evidence that Epstein ever introduced Black, or offered to introduce Black, to any underage woman.”

Leon likes to say the Dechert report was “totally exonerating,” although it did reveal, for the first time, that he had paid Epstein $158 million for his advice over the years. Leon told me those fees were high, yes, and that he had lost track of how much he had paid Epstein, but that the advice saved him $2 billion. (Leon articulated the value of a measly $158 million to him by noting that he was also the guy who paid $100 million for a couple miniature works by Raphael.) Anyway, three days after the release of the Dechert report, Leon announced that he would retire as C.E.O. of Apollo on or before July 31, 2021, his 70th birthday, and that Marc Rowan, who had been by Leon’s side since his days at Drexel in the 1980s, would succeed him. The succession process at Apollo had been in the works for months, Leon told me, and had nothing to do with his relationship with Epstein.

But that timeline got altered by Leon’s next public relations and legal tsunami. This one was brought on by a Russian woman, Guzel Ganieva, with whom he had an affair between 2008 and 2014 and whom Leon had been paying more than $1 million a year in exchange for her signing an N.D.A., which required her to keep quiet about their relationship. By that time, Leon had paid Ganieva $9 million of the $21 million he had agreed to pay her over 15 years for her silence. But on March 17, 2021—two months after the release of the Dechert report—Ganieva claimed in a series of three tweets that she had been “sexually harassed and abused by [Black] for years.”

Ganieva’s decision to break her N.D.A. seemed to amplify the severity of her allegations. “I was bullied, manipulated, threatened and coerced,” she claimed in her tweets, adding that Leon had “forced” her to sign the N.D.A. “I am breaking my silence now,” she concluded, “because I do not want this type of predatory behavior to continue happening to other women. #MeToo #LeonBlack.” Five days later, on March 22, Leon resigned as both the C.E.O. of Apollo and as the chairman of its board of directors, although he remains Apollo’s largest shareholder, with around 90 million shares, worth $12.2 billion.

Black, who vigorously denied all this, later filed a RICO lawsuit against Ganieva, his Apollo partner Josh Harris, and P.R. maestro Steven Rubenstein, claiming that they had engaged in a conspiracy to oust him as C.E.O. That RICO lawsuit was dismissed by the court. (Harris told me that while the lawsuit saddened him, it was decided by a court that “there was zero-point-zero truth to any of it.” Rubenstein declined to comment, but in a legal filing in the case, his attorneys wrote that he “never colluded with Harris to launch a coup against Black.”)

Leon was also sued by two other women—Cheri Pierson and “Jane Doe,” a supposedly autistic teenager—who likewise claimed he had sexually assaulted and raped them, in Epstein’s New York City mansion, no less. (Both women were represented by Wigdor, the law firm that had represented Ganieva.) Leon maintains he has never met either of these women and that he would never “abuse a woman.”

Slowly but surely, the legal system started working, mostly in Leon’s favor. In May 2023, Ganieva’s lawsuit against Leon was dismissed. (Her appeal in New York State remains active, although Wigdor is no longer representing her. Ganieva’s attorney for her appeal, Stephen Bergstein, did not respond to my repeated requests for comment.) In June 2022, Leon’s RICO suit was dismissed—a decision that was upheld on appeal. As I reported in February, Leon and Josh are engaged in an ongoing arbitration, instigated by Leon, regarding whether Josh violated the terms of their shareholder agreement. That arbitration will continue for a long while, I’m told. This past February, Pierson’s suit against Leon was “discontinued with prejudice,” and “without costs to any party as against the other.” Leon’s two countersuits against Wigdor and Ganieva for “malicious prosecution” and “unjust enrichment,” respectively, continue. (He wants Ganieva to return the $9 million to him.) Leon’s suit against Wigdor recently survived a motion to dismiss. Needless to say, Leon has no love for Wigdor, which he told me he plans to hold “accountable” for its “campaign” against him.

Then there is the “Jane Doe” lawsuit, filed in federal court in August 2023, which is also still pending. With Wigdor’s help, Doe claimed in her complaint that when she was 16 and Leon was 51, he pinned her down inside Epstein’s townhouse on the Upper East Side and abused her with sex toys, causing her to bleed. For his part, Leon has denied even meeting Doe—her real name has been shared with Leon and his attorneys—let alone doing the things she accused him of.

Black’s legal team also tracked down Doe’s family, including her mother, who told Leon’s investigators that the whole thing was a fabrication. Among their discoveries, according to court filings, was that Jane Doe did not have autism, but rather had been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Leon’s team argued that Jane Doe studied people with autism and adopted those behaviors, and that her family members claimed she “used a series of different names and personas [and] has a history of making up alternate realities.”

According to Estrich’s letter, nearly a year after filing the first complaint against Leon, Jane Doe and Wigdor wrote a letter to the court notifying it that they intended to amend the original complaint with, in Estrich’s words, a “newly spun narrative” that accounts for the facts uncovered by Leon’s lawyers. Supposedly, the amended complaint no longer accuses Epstein of trafficking Doe; instead, it accuses Doe’s mother of trafficking her. The amended complaint remains under seal with Judge Clarke, although there will be a hearing to decide whether it can be filed publicly.

In the meantime, Estrich, who once upon a time was Mike Dukakis’ presidential campaign manager and is herself a victim of sexual assault, wants discovery from an evidentiary hearing that Rakoff recently held to determine whether Doe, who received millions of dollars from the JPMorgan Chase victim fund, should return the proceeds—information that would be highly relevant to Black and Estrich in their litigation. Leon’s attorneys told me they have reason to believe that Judge Rakoff ordered Doe to return the money she received from the settlement fund, which is why in their letter to Judge Clarke they asked to subpoena Brad Edwards, the lawyer for the class action, and the fund’s administrator. (In an email, Judge Rakoff responded that he could not comment. “It is all under seal,” he wrote.)

At first, Judge Rakoff invited Estrich to attend the hearing, but later changed his mind and excluded her because she and Leon and Jane Doe have their litigation before Judge Clarke. (Edwards did not respond to a request for comment.)

Leon’s legal team believes Wigdor and Jane Doe changed their allegations against Leon, as filed in the sealed amended complaint, because of what came out in Judge Rakoff’s courtroom. After all, if Epstein didn’t traffic her and she had to return the money from the settlement fund, that allegation would have to change in the complaint against Leon. Anyway, that’s the evidence they want Judge Clarke to allow them to discover with the subpoenas. “Those proceedings surely must address, at a minimum, whether Ms. Doe was in fact trafficked or otherwise victimized by Mr. Epstein,” Estrich wrote to Judge Clarke.

Again, this is all highly unusual. And indeed, on October 4, Jeane Christensen, the Wigdor attorney representing Jane Doe, responded in a letter to Judge Clarke that Estrich should petition Judge Rakoff, instead. “It is fundamentally improper to seek an end-run around a matter Judge Rakoff has handled for almost two years by attempting to subpoena various law firms that participated in the matter by going to a different district court for permission,” she argued. “This recent request by [Leon], requiring the [c]ourt to devote its already limited time and resources to, is one more example of Black’s belief that he is above the rules everyone else must abide by.” Christensen’s letter went on: “[Black’s] strategy centers on a course of conduct to malign, shame, blame and destroy the women who have dared to publicly seek recourse through our legal system, including Plaintiff, as well as Wigdor, the law firm hired to represent them.”

Christensen further argued that Leon’s “conspiracy theories are all the same—he wants to divert attention away from his own conduct, especially his well-documented close personal friendship with the now-deceased Jeffrey Epstein.” Asked for a comment, Estrich told me, “This is just an outrageous, scurrilous attack on [Leon’s] reputation, and he's determined to fight back. So I'm not surprised.” She continued: “I think Wigdor … is not willing to stand down even in the face of repeated defeats. Our malicious prosecution lawsuit is going forward. Quite frankly, if we win dismissal of this [Jane Doe] case, we would have reason to amend that lawsuit to include the Doe lawsuit as another basis for malicious prosecution. They’ve gone over the edge.” In other words, whatever Judge Clarke and Judge Rakoff do, this matter is far from over.