Right-Wing Billionaire Sues House for Trying to Ask Him About Epstein

Leon Black, a billionaire investor with millions of dollars in financial ties to Jeffrey Epstein, refused to appear before Congress Thursday.

Black had appeared before the committee for a voluntary, closed-door interview on June 26, where lawmakers used the brief meeting to subpoena Black regarding two nondisclosure agreements he had with different women and to demand he return for a videotaped deposition under oath on September 3.

But Black did not show up. Instead, Black’s legal team filed a lawsuit, suing the committee in an attempt to block the subpoenas.

Earlier this week, Black was identified by outgoing representative Thomas Massie as one of 14 co-conspirators and “perpetrators” of Epstein’s crimes that the lawmaker said the Justice Department should immediately investigate.

In a 28-page complaint, Black’s legal team claimed there was “no justification for such a sweeping and intrusive subpoena served upon a private citizen.”

“Mr. Black supports the congressional efforts to stamp out trafficking and to ensure that this country never has another Jeffrey Epstein. But Mr. Black has already testified to Congress that Epstein had nothing to do with drafting or creating any confidentiality agreements he may possess,” the complaint reads. “He has also informed the Congress that [Ghislaine] Maxwell had nothing to do whatsoever with any such agreements.”

Black co-founded and led Apollo Global Management until 2021, when he was ousted after an internal review found he had significant ties to Epstein, including more than $150 million in payments for financial advice between 2012 and 2017.

Two years later, an unidentified Jane Doe sued Black for allegedly raping her when she was just 16 years old in Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. The graphic lawsuit detailed that the victim had autism and a rare form of Down syndrome that has left her “developmentally … at about 12 years old.” It was the third such lawsuit accusing Black of rape.

Sailors fresh off the USS Abraham Lincoln have some serious concerns about their record-setting deployment.

MS NOW’s Priya Sridhar appeared on The Last Word Wednesday night after speaking with some of the 5,000 sailors deployed for nearly 300 days onboard the aircraft carrier during their long-awaited port call in Pattaya, Thailand.

“Many of them told me that this was in fact the worst deployment that they have ever experienced,” Sridhar said. “It was incredibly hard. And many of them expressed to me that they actually wished they hadn’t even done a port call, at this point, they wanted to just go directly home.”

The sailors also expressed concerns that amid President Trump’s ongoing war with Iran, lengthier deployments would become normalized and hurt Navy retention, especially among junior service members, Sridhar said.

Families of sailors aboard the Lincoln have come forward with reports about their relatives’ experiences with poor conditions, food shortages, and sanitation issues. During the Lincoln’s record-breaking deployment, there have been multiple instances in which sailors tried to jump overboard. One sailor who attempted to jump overboard is reportedly facing disciplinary action and could lose half his pay.

But the Navy’s problems are more widespread than just the Lincoln. Trump’s extended military campaign in the Middle East and total disregard for the conditions U.S. service members are facing is seriously killing morale, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s lackluster leadership certainly isn’t helping.

It looks like the issue will only continue to escalate, as Trump is reportedly plotting to ramp up military action against Iran after the midterm elections.

Republican House leadership has announced that the largest U.S. governing body will be taking a massive fall break, seriously cutting legislative calendar before November’s midterm elections. This comes after the House was already out of session for 5 weeks until returning on Monday.

The House will no longer vote in the final two weeks of September as previously scheduled, according to a notice from Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s office. After a Labor Day break, the House will only be in session for four days before representatives head home again  for all of October. 

Rather than pass laws regarding the war on Iran, data centers, the Epstein Files, the affordability crisis, or any of the litany of other issues burdening Americans right now, members of Congress will return home to focus on campaigning for their own reelections—or just take the two-month paid vacation they’ve just granted themselves.  

This comes just days after Speaker Mike Johnson called Representative Thomas Massie “stupid” and “nonsensical” for suggesting that he was going to send the House home to avoid voting on the Epstein Transparency Act II. 

“Tuesday I tweeted Mike Johnson would recess Congress until after the election in an attempt to stymie our latest Epstein bill,” Massie wrote Thursday on X. “Johnson went on TV adamantly saying that was STUPID and we’d work every day. Today he announced we’ll recess on Sept 17… until after the election!”

House members will clear out of the nation’s capital by September 17. 

This story has been updated.  

Following the president’s example, Trump officials have taken to saying whatever comes to mind with little regard for the significance of their office, or the truth.

Donald Trump defended one such slipup Thursday, shielding Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick after his longtime adviser claimed that no Americans had been harmed in Iran.

“Sec. Lutnick had Venezuela on his mind when he said nobody was killed. 18 people were killed in Iran!” Trump posted on Truth Social.

But Lutnick did not mince his words when he flubbed the statistic during an interview with CNBC on Wednesday, making it abundantly clear that the secretary understood he was speaking about Iran.

“The way the president is playing Iran, right, there’s not—there haven’t been American deaths, it’s really just an economic choke-out, which the administration is now executing more broadly and I think it’ll be very effective,” Lutnick told the network.

Whether or not Lutnick was thinking about Venezuela when he opened his mouth hardly matters. His inability to get the facts right revealed just how clueless the Cabinet member is about the administration’s warmongering, whether that relates to an unpopular Middle East war that has cost the American public hundreds of billions of dollars and more than a dozen American lives, or the decision to indiscriminately bomb boats in the Caribbean, infiltrate a South American government, and abduct its leader.

Nonetheless, Lutnick embraced Trump’s cover, writing in a statement Thursday that he “misspoke.”

“Eighteen members of our military have died, and to those families my heart breaks and I am so very sorry for their loss,” Lutnick wrote on X. “I was thinking about the Venezuelan military operation where no service members died.”

Lutnick then invoked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack, claiming that he was “deeply thankful for our military and the sacrifices the men and women who serve our great country make.” He noted that he lost his brother Gary and hundreds of his “close friends and colleagues” in the World Trade Center collapse.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ordered the new head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to remove two measles deaths from the Pennsylvania tally, in an effort to fudge the numbers lower.

Last Friday, the CDC held off on its annual Friday measles update, waiting instead until Sunday, when it removed the Pennsylvania fatalities, adding a note that read, “At this time, available information does not establish whether measles caused or contributed to the (Pennsylvania) deaths or whether the individuals died from other causes while infected with measles.”

The change was made at Kennedy’s personal request, three sources familiar with the conversation told Reuters.

This decision came days after Kennedy and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro traded barbs online, with Shapiro accusing Kennedy of stoking fear and spreading misinformation by claiming that the measles vaccine contained “fetal tissue,” and that the disease could be cured with “chicken soup and vitamin A.”

“Before [RFK Jr.] held his current position, measles was virtually eliminated in the United States,” Shapiro wrote on X last week. “As recently as 2024, there were only 285 cases of measles across the entire country over 12 months. This year, in just 8 months, there are nearly 400 cases of measles across 29 counties in Pennsylvania alone—and nearly 3,000 cases across the country.... The correlation is clear: Secretary Kennedy has stoked confusion amongst parents and others—and the result has been less protection from measles and more cases.”

Even still, newly appointed CDC head Erica Schwartz removed the deaths from the measles tally in Pennsylvania at RFK Jr.’s behest, completely delegitimizing the findings of the state health care apparatus. Former American Public Health Association chief executive Georges Benjamin called that move “unheard of.”

“The secretary had no business ​interfering in the normal process,” he said. “He has an anti-vaccine agenda and he’s using this to play out his anti-vaccine agenda.”

As Shapiro noted, measles is virtually entirely preventable due to the development of the MMR vaccine, an acronym for “measles, mumps, and rubella.” RFK Jr. of course loathes this vaccine, and his rhetoric against it has surely contributed to the resurgence of the disease—and the deaths which he ordered erased from the database.