Former head of Apollo Global Management Leon Black is still in the hot seat as he deals with multiple accusations of sexual assault of some sort. Now, in one case, his lawyers are claiming that the unidentified accuser’s own family said that she is lying not only about an attack by Black but also about suffering from autism. And Leon Black is also suing the lawyers for a group of three other accusers in another case in a blatant attempt to disrupt the civil suit against him.
Leon Black’s layers have now filed a suit against Wigdor LLP, the law firm representing three different Black accusers, of malicious prosecution. In a court filings, Blacks lawyers charged that the firm, “has a unique business model: it threatens to sue defendants with scandalous allegations that can be avoided only at the cost of a large settlement, of which Wigdor takes a substantial cut. When Plaintiff Leon Black had the temerity to reject this scheme, Wigdor sought to teach him a lesson by three separate headline-grabbing lawsuits which it knew, or should have known, were false.”
Jeanne M. Christensen, a lawyer representing one plaintiff in the suits filed against Leon Black identified only as Jane Doe and a partner at Wigdor responded, “Based on Black’s prior use of private investigators to bully and shame women who have accused him of sexual assault, substantial concern exists about what he intends to do with the fact that he has confidentially obtained Ms. Doe’s true name in this action.”
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Jane Doe charged that Leon Black raped her when she was only 16 years old. But Black’s team found out who she is, investigated her and now charges that she faked suffering from developmental disorders. His lawyer’s stated, “Plaintiff became aware of and studied those behaviors and began intentionally displaying them in her twenties in order to present herself as a person with autism.”
On this, Jeanne M. Christensen issued a statement saying, “Black hopes to shift our attention to defending ourselves against baseless claims so that he can continue to have his private investigators bully and threaten our clients who have dared to call out his sexual violence publicly.”
Leon Black was forced out of his firm over allegations that he was involved in the whole Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Black had paid more than $50 million in various fees to Jeffrey Epstein over the years, even after Epstein was first arrested, and these “fees” were deemed questionable by some. Leon Black, however, has continually denied that he made any sort of “hush” payments to Epstein or payments for anything illicit.