Leon Black And The Motion To ID His Accuser (Part 1) (9/6/26)

0:00What's up everyone and welcome back to the Epstein Chronicles. Leon Black is in a battle with his accuser over her identity and her emotion to remain anonymous as they battle it out inside of the courtroom. Well today we're going to take a look at Leon Black's reply memorandum of law and further support of his motion to amend the caption to disclose the plaintiff's name. In other words, Leon Black wants to put this plaintiff on blast, so let's see what he has to say for himself. Case number 1 23-cv-06418 Jando plaintiff, verse Leon Black, the defendant. Defendant Leon Black's reply memorandum of law and further support of his motion to amend the caption to disclose the plaintiff's name. As defendant showed in his opening brief, the enumerated seal plaintiff factors overwhelmingly weigh against permitting plaintiff to continue to proceed anonymously.

1:03Most notably defendant will be significantly prejudice if plaintiff is permitted to remain anonymous now that discovery has commenced and plaintiff fails to articulate any counter of alling harm that would warrant her continued anonymity. Moreover, plaintiff's own actions indicate that she is more than willing to be publicly identified in connection with her allegations, and indeed she employed various means to amplify her public statements and attract significant attention without any apparent concern for keeping her identity confidential. In her opposition brief, plaintiff fails entirely to show otherwise. She contends that the seal plaintiff factors are non-exhaustive and should not be applied as a mechanical test, but nowhere identifies any additional factors the court should consider, or why it should ignore the factors identified by the second circuit and apply it in countless cases in this district, and by this very court. She baselessly cites retaliation as a reason to maintain her anonymity, but hides the fact that the defendant already knows plaintiff's identity and fails to identify any retaliation

2:08that he has taken, or any non-speculative risk of retaliation if the public were to learn her name. She fails to even identify any particularized, non-speculative harm that she will suffer if she were to proceed using her true name, let alone to substantiate or corroborate any such harm. She unsuccessfully attempts to minimize the prejudice, to defend its ability, to conduct discovery, and disprove her false allegations, and she fails to acknowledge and honestly confront her long and well-documented history of making public statements about her supposed trafficking by Jeffrey Epstein, a subject to which plaintiff devotes a substantial portion of her complaint. In short, plaintiff asks the court to bless her efforts to hurl heinous, reputation-destroying, fabricated allegations against defendant, and innocent third parties from behind the protective cloak of anonymity, while frustrating defendant's right and ability to defend himself. Plaintiff simply is not carried her burden of showing any privacy interest that outweighs

3:10the clear prejudice to defendant and the strong presumption that litigants must proceed under their true names. For all of these reasons, and as discussed in more detail below, and in defendant's opening brief, the court should grant defendant's motion to compel plaintiff to proceed using her true name. The argument As explained in defendant's opening brief, anonymity is the exception and not the rule, and the party seeking to proceed anonymously bears the burden of establishing a privacy interest that outweighs the strong presumption against anonymity. The second circuit has identified ten factors that should guide this analysis, see seal plaintiff vs seal defendant 537, which countless courts in this district have applied in similar cases, nine of the ten factors weigh against anonymity and plaintiff has not shown otherwise. The plaintiff mischaracterizes the governing law. Plaintiff begins her opposition by asserting that defendant's entire argument is invalid because he supposedly treats the non-exhaustive list in seal plaintiff as if it is mechanical

4:13test. She makes much of the second circuit statements that courts should take into account other factors relevant to the particular case under consideration, but never identifies any other factors the court should consider here. At the same time she declares that the court need not consider certain of the enumerated seal plaintiff factors because they are non-relevant. When doing so, plaintiff wrongly conflates the question of how to weigh the factors with weather to consider the factors at all. Moreover, plaintiff never explains why the factors she seeks to exclude are not relevant, other than that they all weigh against anonymity here, effectively conceding the points. Ultimately, plaintiff concedes as she must that the ten seal plaintiff factors are the established guidelines in this circuit for assessing a party's request for anonymity and offers no reason why this court should depart from those guidelines. Defendant will be prejudiced in discovery if plaintiff's anonymity continues.

5:13Plaintiff places great weight on the timing of defendant's motion, implying but stopping short of seriously contending that defendant was required to make his motion as soon as he became aware of evidence inconsistent with his previous position on plaintiff's request for anonymity. Of course, the governing law imposes no such requirement, and indeed plaintiff herself acknowledges that the right to proceed anonymously can be challenged at any time in the litigation. Chief further contends that defendant faces no greater prejudice now than he did a year ago, and only filed the instant motion at this stage to retaliate against plaintiff as there is no reason for defendant to be raising this motion at this time. But of course, there is the well-established good reason. As this court is recognized, the prejudice to a defendant, in fact, at its greatest now, that this case is proceeding to discovery. See, though, versus combs, number 23, Siv, ordering that plaintiff represented by a wig door cannot proceed anonymously, but staying the effect of the order until the case

6:16proceeded to discovery because the prejudice to defendants and is at its greatest if this matter were to proceed to discovery. The timing of defendant's motion is not indicative of malicious intent, but rather of the particular and heightened need for disclosure of plaintiff's identity at the current stage of litigation. Defendant became aware of plaintiff's prior public statements as early as December of 2023, and indeed defendant discussed these statements at length in his motion, seeking a stay of discovery. However, defendant did not object to plaintiff's anonymous status at the time, because he believed that there was a strong possibility that his motion to dismiss would be granted, rendering the issue moot. See, combs? 2024 WL 863 705 at 6, if the court were to dismiss this action, it would do so for a purely legal reason where plaintiff's identity is irrelevant to that decision. Furthermore, because discovery did not proceed while defendant's motion to dismiss and

7:17motion to stay discovery were pending, the prejudice to defendant flowing from plaintiffs anonymous status was lessened. Plaintiff wrongly contends that it is only now that discovery must proceed that defendant believes this evidence justifies challenging plaintiffs and an imiti in this lawsuit. To the contrary, defendant has long known that plaintiff is not entitled to proceed anonymously, not least because of her prior public statements about the allegations in her complaint. But commencement of discovery brought the issue to a head and made immediate defendant's concerns that he would be prejudiced in discovery by the asymmetry in fact gathering, resulting from plaintiffs and an imiti. That prejudice is hardly hypothetical. Defendant cannot conduct effective third party discovery without running a foul of the court's order, allowing plaintiff to proceed anonymously. For example, plaintiff alleges that she missed countless Fridays and Mondays from her junior year of high school almost causing her to fail. In order to properly test these

8:18allegations, which plaintiffs family members have denied, defendant must require attendance and academic records from the school's plaintiff attended, which necessarily requires disclosing plaintiffs name so that the school can search for and locate those records. Similarly, defendant cannot effectively obtain information from individuals who knew plaintiff during the time period in which he alleges to have been trafficked or medical records or information concerning the damages plaintiff seeks in this lawsuit without identifying plaintiff. Defendant simply would be unable to defend himself against these life-rooting accusations if plaintiff is permitted to remain anonymous. See Doe vs. Combs, number 24, SIV-8054-2024-WL-463-5309 at 5, S-DNY, October 30, 2024. If damaging information about one side is aired through the litigation, defendants cannot mitigate the damage to the reputations. This concrete and undeniable prejudice to defendant

9:21weighs strongly against plaintiffs continued anonymity. And you can already see how this calms case is bleeding into Leon Black's case. And that's how it works with these kinds of issues in the court. There's going to be a lot of reference one way or the other. And that's because the courts love precedent. Part 3. Plaintiff alleges nothing more than speculative and generalized harm to herself for third parties if she discloses her real name. In her opposition, plaintiff asserts that she must remain anonymous in order to prevent further harm to herself and innocent third parties, namely members of her family. Redacted, but plaintiff fails to even identify, let alone substantiate any specific or particularized mental or physical harm she will suffer if she is identified publicly. Instead, plaintiff offers only speculative generalized claims of harm, mischaracterizes both defendants' arguments and the governing law, and basically misconstrues defendants' ordinary and absolutely necessary given the allegations, investigative efforts,

10:22as evidence that he will use her identity to harass or retaliate against her or her family. Again, these claims are entirely unfounded, especially considering defendant already knows plaintiff's identity and has not inflicted any such harm to date. Plaintiff first contends that defendant has used his wealth and influence to harass her and her family and asserts that disclosing her identity will only enable him to amplify those efforts. Specifically, she complains that defendant has employed private investigators to contact members of her biological family and her former classmates. But what she describes as prior threats or nothing more than ordinary investigative tactics intended to gather facts about plaintiff's credibility and the validity of her claims. Defendants trained and certified investigator contacted these individuals, not to intimidate them but to gather information and was able to do so because the individuals willingly cooperated and answered his questions, confirming on the record, and in consensually

11:25recorded interviews that they were speaking with the investigator voluntarily and with no coercion or inducement. Indeed, plaintiff accuses defendant of going so far as to imply that she has somehow made up the fact that she has autism, but that is based in part on defendant's accurate recitation of what defendant's investigator was told by plaintiffs' biological family. All right, we're going to wrap up right here and then the next episode we're going to pick up with more fundamentally. All of the information that goes with this episode can be found in the description box.