Oops! Trump appointee leading $205bn US agency had personal ties to Epstein, emails show

[malaise]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/03/ben-black-investment-trump-epstein

Ben Black’s lawyers deny relationship with disgraced financier, but DoJ records reveal years of interactions

Ben Black, the head of a little-known government investment agency funded by billions of dollars from US taxpayers, had personal and business ties to Jeffrey Epstein, according to emails and business filings released by the Department of Justice.

His father, Leon Black, had once been the disgraced financier’s highest-paying client – calling on the convicted sex offender for tax advice and to orchestrate payments to women, according to the New York Times and Bloomberg.

A Guardian review of more than 5,000 records from Epstein’s private correspondence found that Ben Black invested in the same company as the financier in 2011 and that the two men had a relationship for several years afterwards. Epstein told a friend that he attended Ben Black’s 30th birthday, advised him on the purchase of an $11.5m townhouse and helped one woman compose messages to him. She wrote to Epstein to say that she and Black had kissed the following day.

Now Black holds a Senate-confirmed position overseeing the Development Finance Corporation (DFC), the Trump administration’s largest overseas investment arm. The agency was previously confined to work in low-income countries, but Congress recently cleared it to invest in high-income countries and tripled its lending cap to $205bn, greatly expanding Black’s influence over taxpayer funds.

[2naSalit]

1. I'm so sick of this criminal enterprise...

Fucking up the world.

Somebody please make it stop!

[calimary]

4. You're not alone, my friend.

WAAAAAAAAY FAR from it.

[rampartd]

2. 'cleared to invest" in trump projects?

they are moving every pot of billions into places they can disappear.

[Kid Berwyn]

3. Gee. Seems Mr. Epstein had governmental interests...

…to match his social, academic, business, financial and blackmail interests. Plus the protection to keep on criming, administration after administration, from the time Reagan and Bush were betraying America by trading arms for hostages with the Ayatollah Khomeini.

[Amaryllis]

5. But of course he did.

[Karasu]

6. Of fucking course. Leon Black (his father) is all over the Epstein files.

[purr-rat beauty]

7. Alot of Epstein trash floating about...

it's as if they're all in this together..

...including Donnie Jr's wife

[GiqueCee]

8. The grift is on. Murdering civilians in the streets...

... raping underage girls and burying the evidence, rigging elections, dismantling every government program that helps people in need, all get a "meh" from Republicans. But cleaning out the national treasury without giving them a taste... ooooh, that's a bridge too far! And you can't say, with a straight face, that you had no idea that Trump's DFC was one of the tools for doing exactly that.
There ain't gonna be any, "let's look forward, not back", this time around, motherfuckers. Trump's going DOWN, and y'all are goin' down with him. It's gonna be a long fall, and there's no guarantee you'll survive the sudden stop, so you'd best get your affairs in order, or do what Thiel did: Beat feet to a country with no extradition treaty. 'Cause we're comin' for ya!

[Volaris]

9. Goddammit, imma start calling it the Minion Congress