This desk isn't second-sourcing its way to the Times' reporting on Paul Weiss. The reporting — by Michael S. Schmidt and Jessica Silver-Greenberg, based on a range of internal documents and dozens of interviews with current and former Paul Weiss lawyers — is the story. What follows quotes it directly and adds what this dashboard already has on the two names it surfaces with active SEC exposure: Marc Rowan and Leon Black of Apollo Global Management.
The Surrender
On March 14, 2025, Trump signed an executive order titled "Addressing Risks From Paul Weiss," imposing sanctions that could strip the firm's lawyers of security clearances, end federal contracts touching its clients, and restrict building access — potentially catastrophic given more than three-fourths of Paul Weiss's clients had government contracts. Four other firms hit with similar orders fought back and won injunctions from federal judges. Chairman Brad Karp did not. He worked his network — Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Apollo's Marc Rowan — to get a meeting with Trump, then sat in the Oval Office with Trump's personal lawyers, Boris Epshteyn and Robert Giuffra (a Paul Weiss rival at Sullivan & Cromwell), and agreed to $40 million in free legal work for causes the administration backed. Trump then publicly added terms Karp hadn't agreed to — a no-DEI pledge and a fabricated quote about Karp "acknowledging" the guilt of a former partner who had helped build a criminal case against Trump. Karp emailed partners: "I cannot believe this... He changed the agreement, added a no-DEI provision, and came up with a completely false quote saying I acknowledged things I never said." He never said so publicly. Orbit →
"It is plain to us, as it would have been to our grandfather, that taking action to stay off an enemies list does not advance the rule of law." — Amy and Nina Rifkind, granddaughters of Judge Simon Rifkind, author of the firm's 1963 founding principles
What Made the Surrender Possible
The Times traces the capitulation to an internal power shift that predates Trump's second term by nearly a decade. Karp hired Scott Barshay from Cravath in 2016 to build a corporate M&A practice; by the early 2020s corporate work was 65% of firm revenue, dwarfing litigation, and Barshay had joined the "Deciding Group" that sets partner pay. Barshay pushed to curb the firm's pro bono and social-justice litigation as bad for business — at a 2023 dinner, he told litigators they were "soft" and didn't know how to bring in business, and separately demanded the firm's name be pulled from an A.C.L.U. release on a transgender-rights case rather than risk client blowback.
Caught in the middle was Lex Korberg, the firm's first openly transgender partner and a rising litigation star — lead counsel on the Windsor same-sex-marriage case and the Dobbs abortion case. Four people told the Times that after Korberg transitioned in 2021, Barshay said behind their back he considered them a liability because of how clients might react, and began questioning their billable hours. In 2023, Paul Weiss struck a secret $3.5 million deal — never previously reported — under which Korberg agreed not to sue or disparage the firm and left with roughly $6.5 million in exit compensation. The firm's public statement, released to the Times, called Korberg "a highly valued partner" and said Barshay had been "happy" for them to work for his clients; internal email evidence the firm itself provided shows Korberg was not in fact staffed on that client's matter.
The Epstein Thread — and Apollo
Karp stepped down as chairman in January 2026 — replaced by Barshay — after the DOJ's Epstein document release surfaced a March 2019 email in which Karp advised Epstein directly on a legal filing responding to his accusers, calling the draft "overwhelmingly persuasive" and specifically praising an argument that the women had "lied in wait" for strategic advantage. Karp had told partners his name appeared in the files only because of his client relationship with Apollo co-founder Leon Black. The email shows Karp advising Epstein himself, who was never a Paul Weiss client.
That relationship has a documented origin: Karp met Epstein through Leon Black, whom Karp had landed as a client via Apollo in 2011 — Apollo went on to become Paul Weiss's highest-paying client. Black was separately Epstein's primary source of income in Epstein's later years. Apollo's current CEO, Marc Rowan, is the executive who vouched for Karp directly to Trump ahead of the March 2025 Oval Office meeting that produced the settlement — the same meeting where Karp gave up the fight. Both men are now in this dashboard's Section 16 watchlist under Apollo (APO); this desk is watching their Form 4 filing history for any activity around the settlement and Epstein-file disclosure windows, though none has surfaced yet. Suspects →
What This Dashboard's Own Data Adds
A scan of FEC donations by law-firm employer, cross-referenced against this dashboard's policy-event calendar, shows two Paul Weiss partners — H. Christopher Boehning and Ken Ziman — made $10,000 donations 3 and 5 days respectively ahead of CATASTROPHIC-severity events (the Louisiana v. Callais Voting Rights Act case and China's rare-earth export controls). Those scores are not exceptional: Kirkland & Ellis, Steptoe & Johnson, and Quinn Emanuel partners scored higher in the same scan, and this pattern — a firm's partners donating somewhere in the run-up to some major event over a multi-year window — is weak evidence on its own, present across nearly every large firm this dashboard tracks. It does not by itself indicate anything unusual about Paul Weiss specifically. Donors →
No evidence connects Marc Rowan's or Leon Black's Apollo stock activity to the Paul Weiss settlement or the Epstein-file disclosure. Both are newly added to this dashboard's watchlist as of this dispatch specifically because of their documented relationship to Karp, not because of any trading anomaly found so far.
The FEC donation timing found for Boehning and Ziman is not, on its own, evidence of anything beyond routine political giving; it is presented because it exists in this dashboard's data, not because it is unusual relative to peer firms.
Paul Weiss's spokeswoman disputes the characterization of Barshay's treatment of Korberg, calling Korberg "highly valued" and stating Barshay had been "happy" for them to work for his clients; that denial is on the record and represented as such. This desk relies on the Times' underlying reporting, including internal documents the firm itself provided, for the contrary account.
No court or federal agency has found Karp, Barshay, Rowan, or Black in violation of any statute. The Epstein email shows Karp providing legal input to Epstein; it is not evidence of wrongdoing by Karp beyond what is stated here.