New details about the @FBI probe into Brett Kavanaugh's past have emerged, and Democratic Senators are not happy. .@SenWhitehouse accuses the @FBI of running a "fake tip line" and @SenBlumenthal calls the process "an injustice" that was "orchestrated by the White House under Donald Trump."

Since February, I have been working on and off on a look at the controversial tenure of Tidjane Thiam as CEO of @creditsuisse. I learned a few things along the way. Thiam was only the second Black CEO of a major international bank (after Stanley O'Neal, the CEO of Merrill Lynch, who left that bank under a cloud in 2007). Hopes were high for Thiam's impact on Credit Suisse: company shares rose 7% when his hiring was announced.

During the virus, @GoldmanSachs chief David Solomon has scored points for his strong results, numerous client interactions and empathic work from home policies. nytimes.com/2020/08/11/bus… There have been missteps, including his performance at a recent Hamptons concert where attendees partied in close quarters, angering @NYGovCuomo.

Some Wall Street traders are feeling the heat -- from supervisors. @jsbgreenberg and I talked to nine present and six fmr markets employees at @BankofAmerica. They said that whether feverish or simply afraid, they are pressured to come to work. nyti.ms/2UZFaop One estimated that there are 10+ confirmed or likely cases on the fifth floor of the bank's midtown office, where stock traders sit. "Lot of cases are popping up," the employee texted a relative.

Private equity is jumping -- aggressively -- into the financial-policy discussion. Apollo, the $331b investor and lender, is leading the charge. nyti.ms/3bTQIPg "Too little attention has been paid to the financial plumbing of the economy,” wrote @apolloglobal's Marc Rowan in a draft paper on March 29, mentioning the markets for securitized products and real estate. These areas have "seized up," he added.

Wall Street's in a weird spot right now. Volume and volatility are way up. Clients are drawing down credit lines and looking to sell assets. So they're busier than in quite a while. But suddenly, they're in a public health crisis - and working at home to boot. The column-free, football-field size trading floor that typified the last twenty years of Wall Street culture has been replaced by home offices, bedrooms, and living room couches, zoom meetings and mobile-to-mobile conference calls.

Bank execs expected to meet w @realDonaldTrump tomorrow at 3pm to discuss how small business and companies are being affected by #coronavirus. Currently expected to be there: @BankofAmerica
chief Brian Moynihan, @WellsFargo chief Charles Scharf, @GoldmanSachs chief David Solomon, and Gordon Smith, co-president of @jpmorgan. Additional agenda details TBD.

Wall Street was feeling both attacked and paralyzed by the leading Democrat, and some were leery of supporting Trump. Then #SuperTuesday happened. nyti.ms/2vDUXiF .@JoeBiden is regarded by finance executives as a moderate thinker and known quantity people can get behind. His supporters this cycle have included @blackstone's Jon Gray and @GoldmanSachs's Steve Scherr.

Arguments in June Medical Services v Russo is scheduled for SCOTUS on Wednesday. The presence of Justice Kavanaugh could push the outcome in a conservative direction. nyti.ms/32KyVqD Kavanaugh's past opinions, including Garza v Hargan and his SCOTUS opinion on why he denied a stay of a lower court decision related to June Medical, suggest he may opt to impose requirements on Louisiana abortion providers that have been deemed cumbersome.

Harsh letter out from @Barclays investor Sherborne Advisors, which argues its board should rescind its unanimous recommendation to re-appoint embattled CEO Jes Staley, in light of the latest regulatory investigation (focused on his candor about his #JeffreyEpstein ties). @Barclays Letter here: sherborneinvestors.com/SIM_Barclays_2…

Buy ⁦@Boeing⁩ if Trump fares well and short Papa John’s if @ewarren does: how investors are thinking about the #2020Election nytimes.com/2019/12/26/bus… via @nytimes @Boeing @ewarren @nytimes “Markets at this point kind of love gridlock in Washington,” says Kevin Russell of UBS O'Connor. The stock market has ripped 29% amid a Trump White House, Democrat-controlled House, and GOP Senate.

Remarkable outcome as #CurtisFlowers is freed on bail after being tried six times for murder. Thanks to incredible reporting by @InTheDarkAPM, we learned of the many questions around the evidence, and the apparently race-based jury selection that occurred nyti.ms/2S8Mxc7 @InTheDarkAPM That podcast was some of the best reporting I've read or heard in recent years. Talk about impact journalism. @InTheDarkAPM

Accepting the woman of the decade award last night, @taylorswift13 had some choice words for private equity: billboard.com/articles/news/… via @billboard @taylorswift13 @billboard "Lately there's been a new shift that has affected me personally and that I feel is a potentially harmful force in our industry, and as your resident loud person, I feel the need to bring it up. And that is the unregulated world of private equity..."

Attorneys David Boies and Stan Pottinger spent months chasing evidence of damning sexual encounters involving prominent men and recorded by Jeffrey Epstein. menhttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/30/business/david-boies-pottinger-jeffrey-epstein-videos.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share Photos and videos had been promised by a whistleblower using the assumed name Patrick Kessler. The goal: use Kessler’s evidence to extract settlements from the prominent men, potentially providing compensation to women allegedly victimized by them — and to Boies and Pottinger.

She's "misguided," might be "grossly uninformed," looking mostly to "resonate with her base," and sounds like "a parent chiding an ungrateful child": billionaire Leon Cooperman's missive to @ewarren nyti.ms/335mC7J @ewarren He predicted a 25% stock-market decline and criticized her for (using more profane terms) soiling the American dream. But being asked by Warren "pitch in a bit more" to help the less fortunate was too much for Cooperman.

Dane Holmes, head of human capital management at @GoldmanSachs, will retire at year end. @GoldmanSachs Holmes is only the latest partner to leave this year, closely following the announcement by @RMartinChavez, the co-head of securities, just last week.

If @GoldmanSachs were a staredown of Bankers v Traders, the Bankers scored another point today by installing one of their own as co-head of securities as the erstwhile Trader, R. Martin Chavez, retires nyti.ms/34jtWgV @GoldmanSachs Chavez is likely to maintain a profile, however. In an interview, he said he planned to teach a course at the @StanfordGSB entitled "How Software Ate Finance," in keeping w a key theme of his own Wall Street career.

Leon Black note to Apollo employees about Jeffrey Epstein sent this morning says that Apollo has "never done any business with Mr. Epstein at any point in time." "From time to time," Epstein provided professional services to Black's family partnership and other family entities; those services included tax and estate planning matters and "philanthropic advice."

Despite some bluster and outright fibs, Jeffrey Epstein did count some hitters as his clients and business associates, and not just Leslie Wexner. nyti.ms/2Z5eCl6 James "Jes" Staley, now the CEO of Barclays, received dozens of client referrals from Epstein to JPMorgan's private bank, which Staley oversaw in the 2000s. He was grateful enough that he visited Epstein during his incarceration in Florida.

In companywide vmail, @GoldmanSachs CEO Solomon says of #1MDB matter: "I am personally outraged that any employee of the firm would undertake the actions spelled out in the government’s pleadings..." 1/2 Solomon continues: "It goes without saying that they violated the firm’s policies and procedures and acted in conflict with all that we stand for." 2/2 @GoldmanSachs

Selfies with students, mingling with old friends, and a familiar suit on "stag night": The story of Brett Kavanaugh's high school reunion weekend nyti.ms/2yCu9xw Whatever the national reaction to him and his testimony, Justice Kavanaugh received a hero's welcome at his alma mater, where even members of the opposing football team (which was trounced, 24-6) wanted to meet him.