Fight The Smoligarchy: The Billionaire’s Breakfast Club
Apollo's CEO met Epstein for breakfast. Now his money funds Beau Bayh. The smoligarchy's darkest deal.
Last week we discussed Beau Bayh accepting a $25,000 donation from his father’s boss, Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan.
And I explained how the financier in question is a billionaire, AIPAC mega-donor, who gave $1 million to the Trump Victory super PAC in 2020 and was once in the running to be Trump’s Treasury Secretary.
Then I asked you, dear reader, if having Marc Rowan on the donor sheet of the Dem candidate for Secretary of State was something to worry about…
Yeah well a trove of new files just dropped and they show us that Rowan’s world isn’t just about backroom deals and geopolitical blueprints.
It’s also about breakfast at a predator’s house.
Grab your coffee or your Dr. Pepper…it’s time to connect the darkest dots.
This isn’t just a story about a shady-looking conflict of interest. It’s worse. It’s about a candidate accepting major cash from a man who was a frequent, welcome guest in Jeffrey Epstein’s “house of horrors.”
Beau Bayh’s choice of donor shows us exactly how power and impunity operate—in plain sight, over breakfast, and with zero consequences.
Until we decide there should be some.
A Pattern, Not a Mistake
Let’s be clear, Marc Rowan’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t a one-time slip-up. It was a sustained, years-long pattern of association that persisted long after Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea for soliciting a minor as young as 14 years old.
In fact, federal documents show the paper trail of a rather friendly rapport with a registered sex offender:
September 2013: Sunday morning breakfast at Epstein’s Manhattan home
October 22, 2013: Breakfast w/ Marc Rowan, Leon Black, and Josh Harris at JE’s Manhattan residence; Rowan plans to be 30min early “to see Jefferey for 1:1”
January 6, 2016: Rowan’s assistant schedules another meeting at the townhouse, “[Rowan] will move things around and come to Jeffrey. Marc said if Jeffrey wants early breakfast that works for him — he will bring coffee!!!”
January 14, 2016: Rowan’s secretary emails Epstein’s assistant on a Thursday morning saying “MR is happy to meet at Jeffrey’s home and is moving some things around to accommodate. He can be there at 3:45pm and stay as long as needed.”
The timeline is damning and it doesn’t even fully cover the scope of communications between Rowan and Epstein.
For years, a powerful CEO chose to do business with and inside the home of a known, convicted sex offender. And for Beau Bayh to take $25,000 from this man isn’t an oversight. It’s a fundamental failure of judgment.
It says his campaign is willing to overlook grave moral failings for a check, adopting the very “rules don’t apply” mentality he’s supposed to fight.
The Billionaire Breakfast Club’s House of Horrors
But to grasp the full weight of this failure, you have to understand where Marc Rowan was so “happy” to meet.
Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse wasn’t just a rich guy’s pad. It was a customized dungeon, a “house of horrors” where abuse was the central function. This isn’t hyperbole. It’s the documented testimony of victims and the special agents who executed the search warrants on Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse.
Virginia Giuffre described a nightmare labyrinth where “every room” was rigged with cameras and a hidden staircase with a banister of carved eyeballs whispered, “We’re always watching you.” There were a few massage rooms on floors three through four. One of which another victim described as very dark with red-curtain walls and a giant massage table ominously sitting in the center.
The home’s decor was not just grotesque—to any rational actor, it was a gallery of alarm bells. Every guest who entered was greeted by a screaming subtext: a life-sized doll hanging from a chandelier, prosthetic breasts mounted like trophies on a bedroom wall, a menagerie of stuffed exotic animals, and in the foyer, a bronze statue of a young bride suspended by a rope. These were not eccentricities; they were warnings in plain sight.
In 2019, when the FBI raided this Manhattan townhouse, they discovered the horrifying truth behind the décor. What they found was a cache of CDs and black binders, meticulously labeled with victims’ names containing child sex abuse materials.
This was the environment Marc Rowan repeatedly entered for breakfast and business, stepping past the evidence as though it were merely art.
When Beau Bayh accepts a $25,000 donation from a man who was an accommodated guest in this specific place, he’s doing more than engaging a controversial donor. He is monetizing a relationship cultivated in a chamber of exploitation and abuse.
Bayh’s campaign is signaling that the source of the money, and what that source was willing to ignore, does not matter.
For a candidate asking for the public’s trust to oversee our elections and business laws, that is a catastrophic, disqualifying ethical lapse.
The Choice for Indiana
The Secretary of State’s office administers our elections, registers our businesses, and is a cornerstone of public trust. It cannot be for sale to the highest bidder, especially not to individuals who travel in the most corrupt and depraved circles.
Beau Bayh had a simple choice: reject tainted money from a man who courted a predator OR accept it and embrace corruption and criminality.
He chose the check. He chose impunity.
Hoosiers deserve a Secretary of State who understands that some doors—especially on East 71st Street—should never be opened, and some money should never be touched.
Last week, dear reader, I asked you if we should accept the billionaire’s funding. Or do we take the road less traveled and back the grassroots candidate?
This week I leave you with the wise words of Asa:
There is fire on the mountain
And nobody seems to be on the run
Oh, there is fire on the mountaintop
And no one is a-runnin’, oh yes
One day the river will overflow
And there’ll be nowhere for us to go
An we will run, run
Wishing we had put out the fire…