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Deposition Transcripts · Segments · #9601
id
9601
deposition id
13
segment index
14
speaker
Page 15
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lawyers I consulted with had been able to solve. It was a problem that would have destroyed enormous value for my family and also in Apollo, the company I had founded. Epstein also told me that the fees I was paying him were tax-deductible 60-cent dollars, which I only learned years later was not true, i.e. what I believed to be $95 million of net fees paid to him over 5 years was actually $158 million. But at the time I was led to believe by Epstein that I was paying 60-cent dollars. That assurance was subsequently proved to be false. With hindsight, I now see that Epstein exaggerated, embellished, manipulated, and outright lied prolifically and without concern for me or my family, and I now see that his deceit was not limited to me but also extended to numerous highly sophisticated individuals. Epstein took credit for other people's ideas. He falsely claimed to have been involved in decisions -- in my decisions -- about investments. He asserted that he had influence over me. He said false and vicious things about my wife and children. He duped and deceived and he did so repeatedly. In short, with the release of the Epstein files, I now appreciate the full extent to which Epstein was a despicable individual and an inveterate liar. This was a side of him I didn't know. I knew Jekyll. I didn't know Hyde. Ultimately, in 2018, I fired Epstein after growing tired of his relentless pursuit of more and more money from me for professional services, his mistruths and misrepresentations regarding the 60-cent fee payments, and his failure to repay most of the $30 million demand loan that I had made to him. I would have expected that the conclusions in the Dechert report would have definitively answered the questions about my involvement with Epstein, but that has not been the case, and the release of the Justice Department files has only added fuel to the