(Bloomberg) — Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black sued a Congressman from California for allegedly making false statements about the billionaire’s relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein .
Garcia, who’s set to lead the House Oversight Committee after Democrats won control of Congress in the midterm election, vowed to investigate the alleged cover-up of the Epstein files among other matters, according to a statement Tuesday. The House voted in September to hold Black in contempt of Congress for failure to comply with the two subpoenas. In the suit filed Wednesday, Black claims Garcia falsely said Black was one of the last people to interact with Epstein before his August 2019 suicide in a Manhattan federal jail.
Black alleged in the defamation lawsuit that Representative Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, “lied to the American people, claiming that ‘Leon Black is the center of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes,’” after Black had told the committee in a voluntary interview in June that he “had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes and took no part in them. “LAWYER UP,” Garcia warned targets of future probes in an X post. Black also accused the congressman of lying by claiming survivors of Epstein’s crimes told him Black was “involved in direct abuse of women” and “was directly involved with Epstein’s trafficking network.”
