Epstein-linked billionaire accused of rape privately reached out to federal judge to defend his ‘good name’

Lawyers for Leon Black, the billionaire investor who has been accused in a civil lawsuit of raping a teenage girl inside Jeffrey Epstein’s New York townhouse in 2002, reached out to a powerful federal judge in 2024 to raise doubts about the alleged victim’s claims, a Guardian investigation found.

The move set off a months-long court proceeding, which was conducted outside of public view and led US district judge Jed Rakoff to reverse a $2.5m award that had been granted to the alleged victim in a separate Epstein-related class action lawsuit, according to court records. She was later given a much smaller settlement in the class action case.

Jane Doe, as she is known in court filings, has claimed she was trafficked by Epstein and raped by Black when she was a teenager more than two decades ago.

The Guardian’s investigation is revealing new details about the private communications in Black’s legal campaign, which undermined Doe in her civil lawsuit against the Wall Street billionaire.

In a recent court order, Doe faced a significant setback when Jessica Clarke – the federal judge presiding over her civil lawsuit against Black – sanctioned Doe and her former lawyer for “serious, sanctionable misconduct in this case”. Judge Clarke said Doe’s former lawyer had “repeatedly lied to the court and opposing counsel”, and directed her client to destroy a social media account. Doe was sanctioned for having “falsified” some sonogram images that appeared in personal journals, which were submitted to the court as evidence of her abuse by Epstein.

However it was not a complete victory for Black, as the judge also ruled that the high-stakes lawsuit could proceed.

Black, the 74-year-old former Apollo Global Management CEO, paid Epstein $170m, according to an investigation by the Senate finance committee, which he says was for tax and estate planning. Black has denied allegations that he raped or ever met Doe, who is now 40 years old. He has never been charged with any crimes in connection to Epstein or otherwise.

The Epstein scandal has prompted questions about why the accused sex trafficker’s elite circle of friends and associates have not faced greater scrutiny. That may change. Black is due to testify before the House oversight committee on 26 June, according to a person familiar with the matter, as part of the committee’s investigation into, among other things, Epstein’s sex-trafficking rings. He is also facing questions from Democratic senator Ron Wyden, who claimed in a recent letter to Black that the Epstein files released by the Department of Justice “remove any lingering doubt” as to whether Black was “connected to women in Epstein’s network” and alleged that “powerful associates in the US and abroad were surveilling and paying off women on [Black’s] behalf”.