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Deposition Transcripts · Segments · #9600
id
9600
deposition id
13
segment index
13
speaker
Page 14
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straightforward. How much did I pay Epstein? What did Epstein do on my behalf? Did he do work for Apollo at my behest? Did I know about the behavior that led to Epstein's arrest in 2019? The Dechert law firm issued a report in January 2021 that answered each of these questions. That report was filed by Apollo as a public securities disclosure. The fact of the matter is that I am the only person in Epstein's orbit -- including all the individuals who have been called to appear before this Committee -- who has been the subject of an independent investigation made at my request wherein the results were made public. The Dechert report concluded that I had paid Epstein $158 million, and Dechert examined the services Epstein rendered and determined that Epstein performed highly valuable and legitimate tax and estate planning services for my family office, that the tax work was responsible for billions of dollars in savings, and that all of Epstein's work had been vetted by reputable law and accounting firms. Dechert also found that Apollo never retained or did business with Epstein. The Dechert report also determined that I had no awareness of or involvement in any of Epstein's criminal activities. The rank speculation about me was proven to be just that -- rank speculation. As I said earlier, I knew Epstein. I knew about his plea deal, which appeared to me and to most other observers -- and consistent with a relatively lenient sentence -- to have involved an isolated incident. Epstein appeared to me and so many others to have redeemed himself. He served on several prestigious boards, hobnobbed with leading people in academia, the arts, business executives, and numerous world leaders. And Epstein solved a massive estate problem for me that none of the experts and