By Christopher B. Tobe | The CommonSense 401k Project

Some accountability has survived in the AT&T pension risk transfer litigation.

On September 28, 2026, Judge Nathaniel Gorton dismissed the claims against AT&T while allowing a prudence claim against State Street to proceed. The litigation concerns AT&T’s $8.05 billion transfer of pension obligations to Athene in 2023. State Street had been given responsibility for selecting the annuity provider. This is a chance to examine that selection—. [1]

For retirees concerned about being moved into an insurer’s fixed annuity, that opening matters. The question is whether the fiduciary adequately protected the people whose lifetime income would depend on the selected insurer.

Hiring a Consultant Is Not the Same as Delegating the Decision

The dismissal of AT&T raises an understandable question: In 401(k) litigation, hiring a consultant generally does not eliminate the plan committee’s responsibility. Why did AT&T get out here?

The distinction is decision-making authority.

When a consultant recommends investments and a committee makes the decisions, the committee remains responsible for those decisions. A valid delegation of discretionary authority can change who is responsible for the delegated function. That principle can apply in a 401(k) plan as well as a pension risk transfer.

ERISA nevertheless preserves responsibility for a fiduciary’s own conduct in establishing and continuing a delegation, and for specified forms of participation in another fiduciary’s breach. Delegation is not blanket immunity. [3]

Here, the court found insufficient allegations that AT&T influenced the selection, ignored warning signs, failed to monitor State Street, or knew of a breach. That is a conclusion about the allegations in this case—not a rule that employers can escape all fiduciary responsibility by hiring an outside firm. [1,2]

My concern is practical: How much can retirees know about the sponsor’s role before they obtain the internal documents? The appointment agreement, instructions, communications and oversight records may reveal far more than a public announcement saying an “independent fiduciary” selected the insurer.

A Pension Promise Has Value Before a Check Is Missed

The surviving claim also carries an important recognition: A pension annuity can allegedly be less valuable because it is riskier, even while payments continue.

The court maintained its standing determination and allowed State Street’s prudence claim to advance. It left disputes over insurer comparisons and the protection afforded by Athene’s separate account for later factual examination. Only Count IV survives; the other claims were dismissed. [2]

That approach is more sensible than requiring retirees to wait for an insurer’s failure.

In my earlier article on the Lumen litigation, I criticized the idea that retirees have suffered no injury because the Athene “time bomb” has not exploded. The economic question is the value of the replacement promise when it is received—not merely whether this month’s payment arrives. [5]

A pension risk transfer requires scrutiny of the protections surrendered and the protections received. Retirees deserve an explanation of who now owes their benefits, which assets support them, what happens under financial stress, and what recourse remains.

State Street’s Selection Deserves Examination

The Department of Labor’s annuity-selection framework calls for examining the insurer’s portfolio quality and diversification, capital, size relative to the transaction, other liabilities, contract structure and guaranty protections. It directs fiduciaries toward the safest available annuity, subject to a participant-interest qualification. [4]

Those considerations support concrete questions for discovery:

• Which insurers were realistically available, and how did their bids compare?
• What did State Street examine concerning affiliated investments, private credit, reinsurance and liquidity?
• What legal protection does the separate account actually provide?
• What happens after a serious downgrade, and are there enforceable remedies?
• What information did State Street provide to AT&T, and what oversight followed?

A separate-account label should lead to examination of enforceable contract rights. It should not end the inquiry.

My policy position remains that retirees need meaningful downgrade protections before insurer distress becomes insolvency. Whether this particular contract contains adequate protections must be established from the contract and supporting evidence.

The Epstein Files Add Questions About Candor

The Epstein disclosures deserve mention, with precise attribution.

The Financial Times reported that Jeffrey Epstein proposed an Athene-related tax plan he claimed could save Apollo’s co-founders as much as $300 million, seeking a 25 percent success fee.. [6]

In February 2026, the AFT and AAUP asked the SEC to investigate whether Apollo’s disclosures accurately described its executives’ dealings with Epstein. Their letter cited released documents concerning Athene and tax matters. These are concerns raised in a request for investigation, not findings of wrongdoing. [7]

These later disclosures cannot automatically establish what State Street should have known in 2023. They do, however, reinforce the need to examine the reliability of representations, governance and due diligence involving the Apollo-Athene organization.

Some Accountability Is Better Than a Closed Courthouse Door

AT&T’s dismissal is disappointing. But State Street must still defend the prudence of its insurer selection.

The surviving claim offers an opportunity to examine whether retirees received the protection a prudent fiduciary should have obtained. Discovery should establish the available alternatives, the risks examined, the contractual safeguards and the actual decision process.

Retirees should not have to experience an insurer failure before the fiduciary’s work can be scrutinized.

Sources

[1] PLANSPONSOR, September 30, 2026: https://www.plansponsor.com/judge-allows-prt-claims-against-state-street-dismisses-counts-against-att/

[2] Your ERISA Watch, September 30, 2026, summary of Piercy v. AT&T Inc., No. 24-10608-NMG, 2026 WL 2905359 (D. Mass. Sept. 28, 2026): https://www.yourerisawatch.com/2026/09/your-erisa-watch-week-of-september-30-2026/

[3] ERISA §405, 29 U.S.C. §1105: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/29/1105

[4] DOL report to Congress on Interpretive Bulletin 95-1: https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/EBSA/laws-and-regulations/laws/secure-2.0/report-to-congress-on-interpretive-bulletin-95-1.pdf

[5] Prior CommonSense articles:

Judge Says Lumina Retirees Have No Injury—Because the Athene Time Bomb Hasn’t Exploded Yet

Apollo’s garbage dump – Athene loading up on risk endangers retirees in PRT’s and other annuity investors

[6] Financial Times, “Apollo chief Marc Rowan consulted Epstein on firm’s tax affairs”: https://www.ft.com/content/092d9e44-ec17-4da7-8b58-e43bf09113ab

[7] AFT/AAUP letter to the SEC, February 17, 2026: https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/2026/Letter_to_SEC_re_Apollo_Global_Management_February_17_2026.pdf

By Christopher B. Tobe — The CommonSense 401k Project

On Tuesday, October 6, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Anderson v. Intel Corporation Investment Policy Committee. The immediate question concerns what workers must allege before a lawsuit challenging imprudent retirement investments can proceed. The practical stakes reach much further: can fiduciaries place workers’ savings in complicated private investment structures, then use those structures’ uniqueness to make accountability harder?

Tuesday is the argument, not the decision. But the choice taking shape deserves public attention. Supreme Court docket

Private equity’s representatives understand the stakes. The American Investment Council and Managed Funds Association filed a brief supporting Intel. They argue that affirming the meaningful-benchmark standard would reduce litigation risk and encourage alternative investments in 401(k)s. They portray litigation as an obstacle to workers receiving better returns and diversification. I see a different danger: making accountability harder can make expensive products easier to sell. Industry brief

The retirement industry’s sales opportunity is clear. The participant’s benefit still needs to be demonstrated.

The Court already explained who bears the loss

In Thole v. U.S. Bank in 2020, the Court’s majority denied standing to DB pensioners whose fixed benefits had been paid and would remain the same regardless of the lawsuit’s outcome. Justice Kavanaugh expressly contrasted those benefits with 401(k) accounts, whose value depends on investment decisions.

Your employer generally bears the funding obligation for a traditional DB pension. In a DC plan, investment losses and excessive investment costs reduce the account supporting your retirement.

Justice Sotomayor’s dissent, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer and Kagan, argued that beneficiaries had an enforceable interest in their retirement trust’s financial integrity. She warned against preventing pensioners from challenging mismanagement until pensions approached default. The dissent emphasized trust protections, fiduciary duties and participants’ ability to enforce them. Majority and dissent

Thole did not grant automatic standing for every DC claim, and it was not a ruling specifically about private equity losses. But its economic distinction matters: a worker whose own account suffers investment harm presents a different situation from a pensioner whose fixed payment is unaffected.

Intel shows how the pension structure reaches the 401(k)

Intel’s filings provide a concrete example. Its 2015 401(k) report described a master trust containing assets of the 401(k), Retirement Contribution Plan and Minimum Pension Plan. Automatically enrolled participants’ deferrals went into target-date funds investing in master trust accounts. The underlying investments included hedge funds and private equity, venture capital, private credit and other private assets. Some closed-end holdings could not be redeemed on a presently determinable date. Intel’s 2015 filing

The structure later changed. Intel’s 2019 report states that investments moved into units of proprietary collective investment trust funds in January 2018. The master trust was dissolved in January 2019, with the 401(k)’s interests transferred to a separate trust. The report identified all three plans as participating in the CIT trust. Intel’s 2019 filing

That history matters. A participant can hold an interest in a target-date fund, which holds pooled investment interests, which ultimately expose the worker to private funds and their contractual terms.

These filings disclose the structures; they do not prove intentional concealment. My concern is that reporting an investment as units in a pooled vehicle can leave the underlying economics several layers away from the worker trying to understand them.

Pooling DB and DC investments does not pool the employer’s promise to pay a fixed pension. The 401(k) participant still bears the account’s investment results.

A benchmark can help—or protect the decision being challenged

Intel defended its strategy as a way to reduce volatility and downside risk. The Ninth Circuit found the plaintiffs’ comparisons inadequate because the proposed comparator funds had different objectives and risks. Judge Berzon’s concurrence nevertheless stressed that an empirical comparator is not universally required to plead imprudence. Ninth Circuit opinion

Fair comparisons matter. A stock-heavy fund’s higher return during a bull market does not, by itself, establish that a more conservative portfolio was imprudent.

But a benchmark built around the challenged allocation answers a limited question: how did the selected allocation perform against a representation of itself? It does not necessarily answer whether choosing that allocation was prudent for participants in the first place.

If the complaint challenges substantial private equity exposure, requiring a comparator with substantially the same exposure risks assuming the wisdom of the decision under challenge.

A custom strategy should face meaningful evaluation of its total costs, liquidity, valuation practices, conflicts and expected benefits. Its uniqueness should not become a shield.

Workers need a fair path to the evidence

Committee records, manager agreements, fee arrangements and the analysis supporting a private investment allocation can be essential to evaluating prudence. Workers ordinarily have far less access to those materials than fiduciaries and their advisers.

A pleading rule should require facts supporting a plausible claim. It should also recognize where the evidence resides. Demanding a near duplicate investment before discovery can make the most complicated arrangements the hardest to challenge.

My earlier CommonSense articles warned about secrecy and benchmarks and corporate relationships that can compete with participants’ interests. Intel brings those concerns to the courthouse door.

The Court should preserve a realistic path for workers to challenge plausibly imprudent decisions and obtain the evidence needed to evaluate them. That would not predetermine Intel’s liability. It would preserve accountability.

Private equity managers want access to workers’ retirement savings. Workers deserve access to an effective process for protecting those savings.

The Supreme Court already recognized in Thole that 401(k) participants bear the investment consequences. It should ensure that they also have a fair opportunity to enforce the fiduciary protections that accompany them.

In May, I published a detailed history of what I called CalPERS’ “sick, twisted relationship” with Jeffrey Epstein linked Apollo. The piece documented decades of investments, placement-agent payments, conflicts, criminal conduct by former CalPERS officials, and the remarkable fact that Apollo continued to receive CalPERS business long after the scandal exploded.  https://commonsense401kproject.com/2026/05/22/calpers-sick-twisted-relationship-with-jeffrey-epstein-linked-apollo-private-equity/

William D. Cohan’s new 688-page book, Money to Burn: The Unvarnished Truth About Leon Black, Apollo, and the Rise of a New Wall Street, now provides an important independent confirmation of many of those facts. See pages 319-321

And in some respects, Cohan’s telling makes the old CalPERS public-relations narrative look even weaker.

My original article documented a relationship in which CalPERS committed billions to Apollo, bought an ownership stake in Apollo itself, and saw former CalPERS board member Alfred Villalobos receive more than $35 million in Apollo-related commissions across multiple transactions. The article also detailed former CalPERS CEO Federico Buenrostro’s criminal conduct, Villalobos’s role as Apollo’s placement agent, Leon Shahinian’s private-jet trip to New York, and Apollo’s continued relationship with CalPERS afterward. The CommonSense 401k Project

Cohan independently walks through much of this history on pages 319–321 of his book.

Cohan confirms the scale of Apollo’s dependence on CalPERS

Cohan describes CalPERS at the time as both a strategic investor in Apollo’s management company and an approximately $5 billion investor in Apollo funds.

That matters because the placement-agent scandal is sometimes treated as though Apollo were merely one investment manager among hundreds that happened to get caught near a corrupt intermediary.

That framing misses the scale of the relationship.

CalPERS was an extraordinarily important Apollo client.

My earlier investigation identified at least $6.55 billion of documented CalPERS commitments to Apollo vehicles and transactions over time, including commitments after the scandal. The CommonSense 401k Project

Cohan therefore reinforces the core point: this was not some trivial side relationship.

Cohan confirms the extraordinary Villalobos payments

Cohan recounts the investigation into former CalPERS trustee Alfred Villalobos and former CalPERS CEO Federico Buenrostro.

He notes that Villalobos and his firm received more than $60 million in placement-related compensation involving CalPERS business generally.

More specifically, the SEC later alleged that Buenrostro and Villalobos fabricated disclosure documents that induced Apollo to pay placement-agent fees it otherwise would not have paid. The SEC described a $20 million placement-agent fee scheme. SEC

The Justice Department later stated that Villalobos’s ARVCO acted as Apollo’s placement agent in securing approximately $3 billion of CalPERS investments in Apollo-managed funds. DOJ said Apollo ultimately paid ARVCO approximately $14 million after receiving fraudulent disclosure letters. Department of Justice

Those numbers differ because the government proceedings addressed somewhat different transactions and theories. What does not change is the core fact:

Apollo paid Villalobos millions of dollars to help obtain CalPERS money.

The Shahinian episode may be the ugliest part

Cohan devotes substantial attention to Leon Shahinian, the senior CalPERS investment officer responsible for billions of dollars of private-equity investments.

According to Cohan, Shahinian already knew Leon Black and had a good relationship with him.

Cohan makes the obvious point:

“No intermediary was necessary.”

Yet Apollo nevertheless hired Villalobos in connection with the CalPERS transaction.

Villalobos then invited Shahinian to New York for a black-tie Museum of Modern Art event honoring Leon and Debra Black.

Shahinian traveled with Villalobos by private jet.

Villalobos paid the expenses and then billed Apollo approximately:

• $50,000 for the private jet,
• $8,000 for hotel expenses, and
• $1,500 for car services.

Apollo reimbursed those expenses.

About a month later, Shahinian recommended that CalPERS proceed with the Apollo investment.

Cohan says Shahinian did not tell the CalPERS Investment Committee about the New York trip.

This substantially reconfirms the account in my May article. The CommonSense 401k Project

And it raises the same question today that it should have raised then:

Why was a placement agent being paid millions when Apollo already had direct access to the CalPERS official evaluating its investment?

The supposed $125 million “concession” needs to be put in perspective

One element of Cohan’s account deserves more skepticism.

In April 2010, Apollo agreed to reduce fees charged to CalPERS by $125 million over five years and agreed not to use placement agents for future CalPERS commitments. Apollo disclosed the arrangement publicly in its SEC filings. SEC

Contemporary press coverage presented this as a significant concession. CalPERS eventually announced roughly $215 million in fee reductions across multiple managers, with Apollo accounting for $125 million of the total. Los Angeles Times

I don’t view the $125 million in the same way.

Apollo had already made enormous amounts of money from CalPERS before 2010 and would continue making enormous amounts afterward.

CalPERS did not terminate Apollo.

It did not blacklist Apollo.

It did not liquidate every Apollo relationship.

It did not permanently prohibit new Apollo commitments.

Instead, it negotiated a five-year fee reduction while preserving one of CalPERS’ largest private-equity relationships.

That looks much less like punishment when viewed against the economic value of keeping CalPERS as a long-term client.

A useful way to describe it is:

CalPERS recovered $125 million while preserving a relationship worth potentially billions of dollars to Apollo.

That may have been a rational settlement from Apollo’s perspective.

It was also a tremendous public-relations asset for CalPERS.

Management could point to a nine-figure number and say it had forced concessions from Wall Street.

Meanwhile, Apollo remained inside the tent.

The placement-agent promise was even less impressive

Apollo also promised not to use placement agents to obtain future CalPERS commitments.

Again, this sounds stronger in a press release than it does in historical context.

By 2010, the public-pension placement-agent model was already politically radioactive.

CalPERS itself reported in January 2010 that approximately 80% of investment managers had not used placement agents in seeking CalPERS business. Its disclosures showed that ten placement-agent firms nevertheless had received more than $125 million from managers. CalPERS

The scandals were spreading well beyond California. Public-pension placement-agent arrangements became the subject of investigations, enforcement actions, disclosure reforms, bans, and intense press scrutiny around the country.

So Apollo’s promise essentially amounted to:

We will stop using a practice that had just become enormously controversial and increasingly difficult to use anyway.

That is not much of a penalty.

It is certainly not equivalent to disgorgement of Apollo’s historical profits, a ban from managing CalPERS assets, or a fundamental reconsideration of whether Apollo should remain a trusted fiduciary counterparty.

The real winners were CalPERS and Apollo’s public-relations departments

This is the part of the episode that deserves more attention.

Apollo could say:

• it had not been charged with wrongdoing;
• it had cooperated;
• it had voluntarily reduced fees; and
• it would stop using placement agents with CalPERS.

CalPERS could say:

• it launched an investigation;
• it recovered $125 million from Apollo;
• it imposed reforms; and
• corrupt individuals were prosecuted.

Both institutions could declare the matter addressed.

The relationship survived.

That is why I do not regard the $125 million fee reduction as dispositive evidence of tough enforcement.

It may instead have functioned as a very inexpensive price for preserving an enormously lucrative institutional relationship.

Apollo had already earned substantial fees from CalPERS and other public pensions. It would earn vastly more in subsequent years.

CalPERS subsequently committed still more money to Apollo vehicles, including hundreds of millions to Apollo Investment Fund VIII, later Apollo Fund IX, Fund X and other strategies. My earlier timeline documents those subsequent commitments. The CommonSense 401k Project

The scandal therefore did not end the relationship.

It appears to have reset it.

Cohan’s book nevertheless deserves credit

This is an important point because before seeing the actual book, I worried that this history might have been omitted or minimized.

It wasn’t.

Cohan devotes several pages to it and includes details that are devastating to the sanitized version of events.

He specifically emphasizes that no intermediary appeared necessary.

He recounts Apollo reimbursing the private-jet and hotel expenses.

He recounts the millions paid to Villalobos.

He recounts the subsequent CalPERS investment recommendation.

He recounts the $125 million fee reduction.

And he notes that Apollo and the other private-equity firms “got off relatively easily” compared with Villalobos and Buenrostro.

That may be the most important judgment in these pages.

Because it is exactly what happened.

Buenrostro went to prison.

Villalobos faced decades in prison before dying prior to trial.

Apollo kept CalPERS.

The larger question remains unanswered

My May article was not simply about events from 2007–2011.

It asked why a relationship engulfed by this history was allowed to continue largely uninterrupted for another decade and a half.

CalPERS went on investing in Apollo.

Apollo became vastly larger.

Public pensions remained central to Apollo’s capital base.

And later controversies—including Leon Black’s extraordinary financial relationship with Jeffrey Epstein—again failed to cause CalPERS to meaningfully sever its Apollo relationship. The CommonSense 401k Project

Cohan’s book reinforces the historical foundation of that question.

It does not answer the question CalPERS still owes its beneficiaries and California taxpayers:

After everything CalPERS learned about this relationship, why did Apollo remain one of its favored private-market partners?

The $125 million did not answer that question.

Ending placement agents did not answer it.

Sending Buenrostro to prison did not answer it.

And fifteen years of additional Apollo business certainly does not answer it.

The scandal wasn’t merely that corruption occurred. The larger scandal may be how successfully the institutions involved survived it.

By Chris Tobe | The CommonSense 401k Project

Many workers assume that their 401(k) operates under a serious Investment Policy Statement: written rules that control fees, identify risks, expose conflicts, and hold the investment committee accountable.

That assumption is dangerously optimistic.

An IPS can impose real discipline. It can also consist of reassuring language that leaves nearly every important decision to the committee’s discretion. A document promising “prudent investments” and “periodic review” tells participants little unless it explains what must be investigated, what information must be obtained, and what happens when an investment fails the review.

My concern is that the industry has an incentive to keep these policies weak. Specific standards create a record against which decisions can be judged. Vague standards leave more room to defend almost any decision after the fact.

As I argued in my April 30 Commonsense article, weak policies are especially troubling when retirement products contain opaque fees, contractual restrictions, or underlying investments that participants cannot readily examine. The arrival or proposed expansion of private equity, insurance products, and crypto makes meaningful investment governance more urgent.

Honeywell: A disclosure right can be difficult to enforce

Bloomberg Law reported on October 1, 2026, that participants in the CAES Systems LLC 401(k) plan, associated with a company acquired by Honeywell, lost their remaining claim over failure to provide the plan’s IPS. According to the report, Judge Eumi K. Lee concluded that participants lacked standing because they failed to demonstrate injury from the alleged nondisclosure.

That is a standing ruling. It should not be presented as a blanket decision that plans need no IPS or can always withhold one.

The earlier September 19, 2025, order makes the outcome particularly revealing. Participants alleged that the plan charter required the committee to adopt an investment policy, periodically review it, and oversee compliance. The judge concluded that they plausibly alleged a disclosure obligation under ERISA because a formally adopted policy governing investment decisions could be an instrument under which the plan operated. The disclosure claim survived that motion to dismiss.

Yet the later standing ruling, as reported, prevented participants from pursuing it.

This illustrates a serious accountability problem: participants may face a demand to demonstrate concrete injury from being denied information that could help them understand how their retirement money was managed. A disclosure obligation offers limited practical protection if the people it is supposed to benefit cannot enforce it.

Goldman Sachs: No IPS does not automatically mean a breach

In Falberg v. Goldman Sachs, the district court rejected the argument that failure to adopt an IPS established imprudence. The Second Circuit affirmed in a February 14, 2024, summary order.

The appellate court emphasized that the record showed a deliberative investment process, including independent advice and detailed investment reports. It did not establish that investment committees can dispense with investigation, monitoring, or fiduciary responsibility.

Nevertheless, the practical message available to the industry is clear: a written IPS is not a universal prerequisite to defending a plan’s investment process.

Honeywell and Goldman address different legal questions, but together they expose the weakness in the public’s assumption. Workers cannot simply presume that a meaningful written policy exists, or that they will obtain an effective remedy when access is denied.

Why an empty policy can be attractive

A strong IPS forces difficult questions before a contract is signed.

Who receives compensation? What restrictions apply if the committee wants to leave? Who determines asset values? What happens if an insurer deteriorates? What evidence supports selecting this product over available alternatives?

A superficial IPS can avoid those questions by promising to consider “appropriate factors” without identifying the factors or requiring a documented answer.

I suspect that some sponsors and advisers prefer this flexibility because it reduces the number of specific commitments that participants can test. That is an assessment of the incentives, not a finding that Honeywell or Goldman deliberately weakened policies to conceal misconduct.

The distinction matters. Avoiding a specific written commitment may narrow one avenue of challenge. It does not erase ERISA’s underlying fiduciary duties.

Complex products need specific scrutiny

Private equity demands scrutiny of total fees, carried interest, valuation methods, leverage, capital commitments, and liquidity. A smooth reported return should never substitute for examining how the assets were priced and whether the plan can obtain cash when needed.

General account and separate account fixed annuities demand scrutiny of insurer credit exposure, crediting-rate discretion, embedded spreads, compensation arrangements, surrender charges, market-value adjustments, and restrictions on plan-level withdrawals. A policy that treats “principal protection” as the complete analysis leaves the contractual risks largely unanswered.

Crypto exposure demands scrutiny of volatility, custody, trading costs, valuation, and the precise exposure being purchased. A cryptocurrency holding and an investment in a crypto-related business present different questions.

These are proposed oversight standards. Neither cited case establishes that its plan held private equity, annuities, or crypto.

The same scrutiny should extend inside target-date funds and collective investment trusts. Reviewing the outer wrapper cannot substitute for understanding material underlying exposures and contractual terms.

What participants should demand

A useful IPS should require:

• A complete accounting of direct and indirect compensation, with reasonable estimates and explanations where exact amounts cannot be obtained.
• Written review of material contract terms before signing, including exit costs and liquidity under stress.
• Examination of underlying holdings, valuation methods, leverage, and credit exposure.
• Identification of conflicts, parties in interest, and applicable prohibited-transaction exemptions and their conditions.
• Clear monitoring responsibilities, review triggers, and documented reasons for retaining an investment after concerns arise.
• Participant access to the policy and meaningful explanations of material revisions.

Flexibility can be appropriate. It should come with reasons, records, and accountability.

An IPS cannot guarantee prudent decisions. But a policy that never requires the committee to confront fees, credit risk, liquidity, valuation, or conflicts offers little protection to the people financing the plan.

Workers deserve investment rules that help protect their retirement money. They should not have to mistake a sponsor’s carefully preserved discretion for fiduciary discipline.

Sources

• Prior Commonsense article: https://commonsense401kproject.com/2026/04/30/investment-policy-statements-ips-are-avoided-in-401ks-to-hide-fees-and-risks/
• Bloomberg Law, October 1, 2026: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/employee-benefits/honeywell-unit-free-from-401k-fund-policy-disclosure-lawsuit
• Phillips/Cobham, September 19, 2025 order: https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/california/candce/5:2023cv03785/416085/93
• Falberg district court opinion: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-york/nysdce/1:2019cv09910/525303/256/
• Falberg appellate summary order: https://benefitslink.com/src/ctop/falberg-v-goldman-sachs-2dcir-02142024.pdf

By Christopher B. Tobe | CommonSense 401k Project | October 1, 2026

Public pension executives have joined the ranks of government employees receiving seven-figure compensation. At CalPERS, the chief investment officer collected more than $2.26 million. At Texas Teachers, public-records reporting identified 22 employees receiving at least $1 million in 2024. Wisconsin’s investment board had eight employees above $1 million in its 2025 payroll records.

The biggest college football coaches still earn far more. But public pension staff have entered the compensation territory occupied by many university coaches—and their performance is much harder for the public to judge.

A football coach cannot quietly replace a loss with an appraisal of what the team might have been worth. Pension investment performance, especially where private equity is involved, depends on valuation judgments, reporting conventions and benchmarks that ordinary beneficiaries cannot readily reproduce.

When those same numbers help determine employee bonuses, the people overseeing the investments have a financial interest in the scoreboard.

Millions in pay and a growing national pattern

Pension organization	Documented compensation finding
CalPERS	CIO Stephen Gilmore received $2,260,469 for FY2024–25, including $1,541,719 in annual incentive pay.
CalPERS	CEO Marcie Frost who was hired without even a college degree received a $1.15 million incentive award in September 2026, putting her package above $1.7 million when combined with base salary.
Texas TRS	CIO Jase Auby received nearly $2.2 million in 2024; 21 other employees also received at least $1 million.
Wisconsin Investment Board	Eight employees exceeded $1 million in reported 2025 pay; executive director/CIO Edwin Denson received approximately $1.90 million.
Washington State Investment Board	CEO Allyson Tucker received $725,600 and CIO Christopher Hanak $677,900 in reported 2024 earnings.

These are different reporting periods and compensation measures, rather than a single national ranking. Texas’s unusually large 2024 payout included previously withheld awards. That distinction matters, but it does not erase the scale of the compensation.

Sources: CalPERS compensation analysis and disclosure references, CalMatters on Frost’s September 2026 award, Texas public-records reporting, Wisconsin payroll records, Washington CEO records, Washington CIO records, and Kentucky salary records.

Ohio STRS and the favorable performance number

The most pointed evidence comes from Allen Mendenhall and Dan Sutter’s 2026 paper, Retirement at Risk: The Political Economy of Public Pension Governance.

For 2003–2022, the researchers found that Ohio STRS’s reported investment return exceeded the return they reconstructed from audited financial information in 19 of 20 years. The average difference was approximately 0.33 percentage points annually. They connect the reported measure to investment-staff incentive compensation.

Their estimated $9.3 billion compounded discrepancy is not a finding that employees received $9.3 billion in improper bonuses. It measures the cumulative difference under their calculation.

The paper raises a serious governance question. It does not independently prove intentional falsification or show that private-equity marks caused the entire gap. Differences in cash-flow timing, valuation dates and methodology can systematically affect comparisons; the two return measures must be reconciled before treating the discrepancy as established fraud.

But beneficiaries should not have to take the investment department’s preferred number on faith when that number helps determine its pay.

CommonSense’s July analysis and August follow-up argued that STRS’s reliance on GIPS compliance and performance verification did not resolve the underlying discrepancy. The appropriate answer is a public, independently reviewed reconciliation.

Source: Mendenhall and Sutter’s paper.

Private equity makes the scoreboard harder to check

Publicly traded securities have observable prices. Private-equity interests generally depend on periodic fair-value estimates, often supplied by the managers running the partnerships. Those estimates can be reasonable and still differ materially from the proceeds available in an actual sale.

A valuation increase can therefore contribute to reported pension performance before the pension receives cash from an exit. If that reported performance triggers employee bonuses, staff can be rewarded before the underlying economic result is realized.

Lagged valuations and appraisal-based benchmarks add further complications. They can postpone recognition of market changes and make returns appear smoother. Their effects vary with market conditions; they do not automatically inflate every return.

The incentive problem remains: staff paid for reported outperformance have a personal stake in the valuations and measuring rules. Boards should place those decisions under independent oversight, especially when subsequent write-downs may arrive after bonuses have been paid.

The consultant helps set the pay scale

CommonSense’s September article on Global Governance Advisors examined GGA’s work involving CalPERS and STRS Ohio and its identification of OMERS Ventures among its clients.

The broader concern applies to compensation consulting throughout the industry. Selecting highly paid peers can justify a larger compensation opportunity. Other pensions can then use that newly enlarged package in their own comparisons.

Washington’s official budget materials explicitly describe increases intended to bring investment salary ranges up to peer averages. Florida SBA’s 2025 compensation discussions compared its incentive opportunities with California’s and involved a Mercer benchmarking study.

Those records show how the upward pressure travels. They do not prove that consultants falsified investment returns. They show why trustees must scrutinize both the performance benchmark used to earn a bonus and the compensation benchmark used to enlarge it.

Sources: Washington budget explanation and Florida SBA meeting materials.

Boards must make the bonus calculation reproducible

Pension systems argue that competitive compensation attracts talent and that internal investment management can cost less than outside managers. That argument deserves a fair test: independently measured net returns, appropriate risk comparisons and documented savings.

It cannot be settled by pointing to a high return in a rising market, an easy policy benchmark or another pension’s larger paycheck.

Before approving extraordinary incentive compensation, trustees should require:

• Public reconciliation of the return used for bonuses with audited financial information.
• Long-term performance after all investment costs, compared with transparent, investable alternatives.
• Independent review of private-asset valuations and every material benchmark change.
• Meaningful deferral and clawbacks when later valuations or realized exits undermine the results that generated bonuses.
• Disclosure of compensation peer groups, by location like Columbus and Sacremento consultant relationships and each employee’s actual incentive payments.

Public pension staff manage workers’ deferred wages. When they seek compensation approaching the pay of university coaches, beneficiaries deserve a scoreboard they can verify—and a board willing to challenge the people being paid by it.

 https://commonsense401kproject.com/2026/09/19/the-consultant-behind-the-public-pension-pay-machine-gga-helped-legitimize-excessive-pay-at-calpers-strs-ohio-ontario-omers/    

CalPERS: sets its own Excessive Pay – off the Charts

Ohio STRS Responds to Charges It Gamed Its Own Bonuses — With More Games

New Academic Paper -Ohio STRS Had Two Performance Numbers—And Used the Better One to Pay Bonuses

Warren and Sanders demand answers from Trump’s Labor Department about fake support for private equity, private credit and cryptocurrency

On September 25, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders sent the Department of Labor a letter containing a question that should stop its proposed alternative-assets rule in its tracks:

Who manufactured nearly 12,000 public comments supporting the effort to open workers’ 401(k) accounts to private equity, private credit, cryptocurrency and other alternative assets?

The comments were supposed to demonstrate grassroots enthusiasm for putting Wall Street’s most opaque, illiquid and expensive products into ordinary retirement plans.

Instead, Bloomberg found five nearly identical templates submitted in similar daily quantities over roughly one week. The supportive comments lacked signatures and meaningful personalization. People whose names appeared on them said they had not submitted them. At least one purported commenter had reportedly been dead for approximately five months.

That is not grassroots support.

It is astroturf—with retirement money at stake.

And the senators’ letter raises an even more disturbing possibility: the Labor Department may have procedures that allow comments submitted under stolen or misused identities to remain in the rulemaking record.

DOL has until October 8 to explain itself

Warren, the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, and Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate HELP Committee, directed their questions to Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling and EBSA Assistant Secretary Daniel Aronowitz. They requested answers by October 8, 2026.

Their questions go well beyond asking whether a few names were inaccurate. They ask DOL to disclose:

• its current guidance for comments containing potentially false identity information;
• whether that guidance has changed since 2019;
• whether identity-misused comments are merely relabeled as anonymous and left online;
• whether DOL is investigating Bloomberg’s findings;
• whether the investigation is attempting to identify the individual, company, organization or other entity that submitted or coordinated the comments;
• what submission metadata—including IP-address information—DOL retains and reviews;
• what controls detect mass submissions under different names; and
• whether DOL will authenticate the suspect comments before relying on them or claiming public support for the rule.

Those are exactly the right questions.

But DOL should answer one more:

Will it suspend this rulemaking until it can establish the integrity of the administrative record?

The most alarming part may be DOL’s existing policy

The Warren–Sanders letter points to a 2019 Government Accountability Office review of federal comment procedures. According to GAO, DOL guidance said that when someone falsely claims to be a commenter, the identifying information is removed, the comment is treated as anonymous—and the comment remains posted.

GAO also found that DOL’s guidance did not explain how officials determine that a submission used false identity information.

Think about what that means in this docket.

If someone borrowed thousands of names to manufacture support for Wall Street’s preferred rule, DOL’s apparent response might be to erase the names but preserve the manufactured advocacy as anonymous public opinion.

That would solve the identity problem by protecting the fake campaign instead of protecting the people whose identities were misused.

The Administrative Procedure Act may not require agencies to authenticate every commenter. But no serious rulemaking process should treat 12,000 coordinated, possibly unauthorized submissions as equivalent to 12,000 independent expressions of public support.

A template repeated 12,000 times is not 12,000 analyses.

And a stolen name is not a vote.

This is not DOL’s first fake-comment warning

The letter reminds DOL that the problem is not new.

In 2017, The Wall Street Journal examined comments concerning DOL’s earlier fiduciary rule. Forty percent of the individuals contacted reportedly said they had not written the comments attributed to them. Most of the 345 comments examined criticized the fiduciary rule and aligned with Wall Street’s policy position.

GAO later examined public-comment data that included EBSA submissions and estimated that between 5% and 30% of presumed commenters may not have submitted the comments attributed to them.

DOL therefore cannot credibly say it had no warning that its electronic comment system was vulnerable to identity misuse and coordinated flooding.

It was warned.

The same agency is now considering a rule that could channel trillions of dollars of defined-contribution assets toward industries desperate for new capital.

Follow the money, not the fake names

The proposed rule would establish a safe harbor for fiduciaries selecting investments containing private equity, private credit, digital assets and other alternatives.

The industries benefiting from that rule have an obvious economic interest in portraying it as a popular democratization of investments once reserved for wealthy institutions.

But the authentic comment record points in the other direction. According to the senators, more than 30,000 opposing comments generally included identifying details such as a city, state or email address. The nearly 12,000 suspect supportive comments lacked comparable personalization.

That does not prove which person or organization created them. It does establish why DOL must preserve and examine the electronic evidence before finalizing anything.

The investigation should follow:

• IP addresses and submission timestamps;
• browser, device and platform metadata retained by Regulations.gov or DOL;
• identical formatting, typographical artifacts and template variants;
• referral links and campaign landing pages;
• vendors or consultants that generated or transmitted the submissions;
• payments by asset managers, insurers, crypto interests, trade associations or advocacy groups;
• communications involving DOL, White House or industry personnel; and
• whether anyone presented the manufactured volume to policymakers as proof of genuine public support.

The relevant question is not merely whose names appeared on the comments.

It is who paid for the campaign, who executed it, who knew about it and whether anyone inside government relied on it.

The sales pitch being amplified was already misleading

The suspect comments did not arise in a vacuum. They supported an industry campaign built around claims that alternative assets will democratize opportunity, improve returns and diversify retirement portfolios.

But, as CommonSense previously explained in “Private Equity’s New 401(k) Sales Pitch: Fake Diversification From Smoothed Numbers”, much of private equity’s reported diversification advantage can be an artifact of valuation.

Public stocks confess their volatility every trading day. Private funds report valuations periodically, often using manager models and stale inputs. That can produce:

Smoothed NAV → lower reported volatility → lower reported correlation → higher reported Sharpe ratio → apparent diversification.

The economic risk did not necessarily disappear.

The ruler changed.

If thousands of manufactured comments were used to amplify a sales pitch already dependent on smoothed numbers, DOL faces two different integrity problems:

1. Were the commenters authentic?
2. Were the investment claims authentic?

A prudent fiduciary must demand unsmoothed volatility, stress-period correlations, secondary-market discounts and appropriate liquid comparators before accepting the claim that private equity reduces target-date-fund risk.

The contracts tell a different story from the marketing

CommonSense also reviewed actual private-equity limited-partnership agreements in “The Contracts Private Equity Doesn’t Want 401(k) Participants to See”.

Those agreements reveal an industry that understands ERISA extremely well—and drafts elaborate machinery to keep ERISA from following plan money into underlying fund assets.

The contracts use venture-capital-operating-company exceptions, benefit-plan-investor thresholds, feeder funds, parallel vehicles, alternative investment vehicles, conduit entities and other structures. They disclose potential monitoring, transaction, advisory, financing, breakup, director and affiliated fees. They include transfer restrictions, manager-controlled valuations, indemnification provisions and limitations on withdrawal.

The participant may see only:

Target Date 2055 Fund

Underneath that label may sit:

Target-date CIT → private-market CIT or feeder → conduit vehicle → private-equity partnership → portfolio company.

The industry’s public message is democratization.

Its private contracts are about control, confidentiality, fees, valuation, liquidity and avoiding look-through fiduciary status.

Before DOL offers fiduciaries a safe harbor, it should require them to obtain and analyze every governing contract below the target-date fund. If the industry says the new 401(k) contracts will be different, the answer is simple:

Show them.

Liquidity is where the deception can become a participant loss

The proposed rule identifies liquidity as one of six fiduciary factors. But liquidity cannot be reduced to a checklist entry.

As CommonSense explained in “Liquidity Is a Retirement Risk ERISA Fiduciaries Need to Start Taking Seriously”, there are two separate questions:

1. Can the participant get out?
2. Can the plan or target-date fund get out of its underlying investment?

A participant may trade a target-date fund every day even though its private-equity, private-credit or insurance holdings cannot be sold daily at their reported values.

Someone must provide that liquidity. During normal markets it may come from new contributions or sales of public securities. During stress, redemptions can force the liquid portion of the fund to shrink while stale private assets remain. Funds may impose gates, sell assets at discounts or shift losses toward participants who stay behind.

That creates a first-mover problem inside an investment marketed as a simple retirement default.

The central valuation question is equally simple:

If an asset cannot be sold for its reported value, why should its reported value be treated as real?

An asset does not become liquid because a CIT prints a daily unit value. Private equity does not become less volatile because its manager marks it quarterly. And a retirement fund does not become diversified merely because daily-priced public securities are combined with manager-valued private assets in one spreadsheet.

DOL should not finalize a rule built on a contaminated record

The nearly 12,000 suspect comments do not, by themselves, prove that DOL officials participated in or knew about the campaign. They do not identify the sponsor. They do not prove that every supportive comment was unauthorized.

That is why an investigation is necessary.

But DOL should not exploit uncertainty created by the missing investigation. It should not count questionable comments, leave them posted as anonymous support, summarize them as evidence of public sentiment or finalize the rule before determining who submitted them.

At minimum, DOL should:

1. preserve all comments, submission metadata and internal communications;
2. identify the common source or sources of the five templates;
3. notify people whose identities were apparently used without authorization;
4. flag disputed comments publicly rather than silently relabeling them anonymous;
5. disclose the number of suspect comments and exclude them from any characterization of public support;
6. refer potential violations to DOJ and the DOL Inspector General;
7. release the methodology and findings of its authenticity review; and
8. withdraw or suspend the proposed rule until the administrative record is trustworthy.

Bottom line

Private equity wants access to workers’ retirement savings.

Its sales pitch relies on smoothed valuations that can manufacture apparent diversification. Its contracts hide fees, conflicts, control and illiquidity beneath layers of entities. And now its political support appears to include nearly 12,000 public comments that may themselves have been manufactured.

The pattern is hard to ignore:

Smoothed numbers manufacture lower risk.

Secret contracts manufacture plausible deniability.

Fake comments manufacture public support.

DOL should not provide a safe harbor for private markets while its own public-comment process may have become a harbor for astroturfing.

Before the Department puts private equity into America’s 401(k) default funds, it must tell the public who tried to put dead people and stolen identities into the rulemaking record.

---

Primary sources and related CommonSense analysis

• Warren–Sanders letter to Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling and EBSA Assistant Secretary Daniel Aronowitz, September 25, 2026
• Senate Banking Committee announcement
• DOL rulemaking docket EBSA-2026-0166
• GAO-19-483: Federal Rulemaking—Identity Information in the Public Comment Process
• GAO-20-383R: Selected Agencies’ Management of Public Comments
• GAO-21-103181: Public Comment Data and Their Limitations
• Private Equity’s New 401(k) Sales Pitch: Fake Diversification From Smoothed Numbers
• The Contracts Private Equity Doesn’t Want 401(k) Participants to See
• Liquidity Is a Retirement Risk ERISA Fiduciaries Need to Start Taking Seriously

By Christopher B. Tobe, CFA, CAIA | September 2026

For decades, the insurance industry has sold a simple story: Leave oversight to the states, trust the insurer’s rating, and count on a state guaranty association if the insurer fails. That story gets harder to defend when an insurer is part of a national private-equity and private-credit machine.

Now the Congressional Research Service has put a new federal insurance regulator on Congress’s list of options. Its September 23 report, Private Investments and Insurance Companies, does not outright endorse that option. It does something important: it acknowledges that Congress may need to consider a new federal regulator, stronger federal oversight of state supervision, or other federal approaches to the risks. This is the opening Congress should use.

My preferred answer is a CFPB-style federal insurance watchdog, created by Congress with genuine authority over life insurers, annuity products and the financial groups behind them. Consumer protection alone is insufficient. It also needs prudential examination powers: the ability to see the assets, test capital and liquidity, inspect affiliated transactions, and intervene before a retiree misses a payment. Congress should design the agency to work with state insurance departments, the SEC, the Department of Labor and the Financial Stability Oversight Council, with clear authority and duties rather than another advisory committee.

The CRS numbers should end the complacency

CRS reports that the number of private-equity-owned insurers rose from about 25 in 2017 to 139 in 2024. In 2024 they held about $700 billion in cash and invested assets. Life insurers’ private-credit holdings totaled about $849 billion, or 14% of their balance sheets. Private-equity-owned life insurers represented 18% of the annuity market and 33% of the indexed-annuity market that year. These are industry-wide findings, not claims that every insurer has the same exposure. Read the CRS report.

CRS also says private-equity-owned insurers tend to hold more illiquid private investments and affiliated assets than independent insurers. It discusses private ratings, offshore reinsurance, financial engineering and potential regulatory arbitrage. It notes research finding that private ratings can understate credit risk relative to public ratings, with consequences for regulatory capital. None of those facts proves that an individual carrier is insolvent. Together, they make the case for national examination of the entire insurance and asset-management group. CRS report, “PE Ownership and Insurer Private Assets” and “Policy Issues.”

The federal regulatory gap is explicit. CRS says insurers are chartered and regulated by states and that there is no federal regulator akin to those for banks and capital markets. NAIC model rules do not become law unless states adopt them. A multistate insurer can have a national balance sheet and offshore affiliates while its primary supervision rests with its state of domicile. CRS report, “Investment Regulation of Insurers.”

A guaranty association is a cleanup crew, not a risk regulator

CRS states that guaranty funds have coverage limits, so an annuity holder may not be made whole after insolvency. Most are financed by assessments on other insurers after the failure. A guaranty association does not inspect an affiliated loan today, challenge a private rating tomorrow, or guarantee that a pensioner’s full benefit will be paid through a systemic crisis. CRS report, “Policyholder protection.”

I have argued that the post-failure assessment system is inadequate for a large private-credit-related failure. If several insurers hold similar opaque loans, the survivors asked to pay assessments may be short of cash themselves. Congress should require a publicly tested resolution plan for large life insurers and examine a prefunded, risk-based federal layer of protection for retirement annuities. That proposal requires honest funding, defined coverage and insurer-paid premiums; it must not be marketed as an existing federal guarantee.

What the watchdog should be able to do

Congress should give a new federal agency authority to:

1. Examine the entire group. Obtain records from the insurer, controlling asset manager, affiliated funds and reinsurers, including offshore arrangements and assets routed through intermediaries.
2. Publish comparable risk disclosures. Report private-credit concentration, related-party exposure, valuation methods, ratings provenance, liquidity stress results, reinsurance recoverables, surrender constraints and material compensation or spreads. Protect genuinely confidential loan details while giving policyholders usable information.
3. Challenge capital and valuations. Independently test private ratings and asset prices, impose conservative capital treatment where evidence is weak, and order corrective action before insolvency.
4. Police retirement contracts. Require plain-language disclosures and meaningful pre-failure protections for annuities sold to 401(k) and 403(b) plans and used in pension risk transfers, including enforceable remedies after serious deterioration or downgrade. Coordinate with Labor on ERISA fiduciary and prohibited-transaction questions.
5. Plan for failure in advance. Require liquidity stress tests and credible resolution plans; assess whether state guaranty associations can meet realistic, simultaneous failure scenarios; and seek congressional authorization for a funded national protection layer.

This is a legislative proposal, not a description of current CFPB powers. As I wrote earlier, CFPB founder Elizabeth Warren has a keen interest as existing federal law generally keeps the business of insurance outside the CFPB’s jurisdiction. Congress would need to create and fund the authority, decide how it shares jurisdiction with states and existing federal agencies, and give it independent examination and enforcement tools. The CFPB model is valuable because it starts with the people who bear the risk and gives a national watchdog the ability to act on their behalf.

The test is whether Congress acts before a collapse

My Security Benefit analysis tied to the current insurance empire that included the LA Dodgers and Lakers and discussion of affiliated private-credit conflicts raise questions about concentration, valuations and liquidity. Those are reasons for rigorous investigation, not findings of insolvency or wrongdoing. A credible regulator would obtain the records, stress the assets and publish defensible conclusions before policyholders are trapped in rehabilitation.

CRS has offered Congress a menu. Congress should choose the option that matches the scale of the business: a national insurance watchdog with consumer-protection, group-supervision and early-intervention powers, backed by a serious plan to fund policyholder protection. Workers and retirees should not discover the limits of state oversight and state guaranty associations only after their insurer fails.

By Chris Tobe | The CommonSense 401k Project | September 25, 2026

Florida voters are choosing more than a governor this November. They are choosing all three elected trustees of the board that invests Florida public employees’ pension money: the governor, attorney general and chief financial officer. A fourth statewide race, for U.S. Senate, has a current SBA trustee and offers voters a chance to ask who will demand federal answers about Jeffrey Epstein’s financiers.

The Florida Retirement systems at over $200 billion wield tremendous power.  They recently sued the NY Times on behalf of Israel who did not like their rather light genocide coverage.   Also, Marc Rowan the CEO of Apollo and a member of the Gaza committee gave at least $14,000 to Ashley Moody.

Here is the question the campaigns should have to answer: Why is Florida still investing retirement money with Apollo while Congress and labor unions are demanding answers about its founders’ dealings with Epstein?

This is a question about fiduciary judgment, disclosure and accountability. A former Apollo founder’s dealings with Epstein do not establish that Florida’s pension investment was improper or that any candidate participated in Epstein’s crimes. They do make the fund’s exposure, fees, oversight and exit options legitimate election issues.

The holding Florida retirees can actually see

The State Board of Administration’s historically has invested over $1 billion with Apollo over the period that its largest owner and founder Leon Black contributed over $170 million to Jeffrey Epstein.  Latest holdings lists $26,590,431 in Apollo Accord Fund VI, L.P. under the pension plan’s active-credit private-credit holdings.

The same report shows $211.5 billion in Florida Retirement System Pension Plan assets, including $18.9 billion in private equity and $11.4 billion in active credit as of June 30, 2025.

Source: Florida State Board of Administration, 2024–25 Annual Investment Report

Why the Epstein connection cannot be waved away

Senator Ron Wyden’s Finance Committee investigation says Apollo cofounder and former CEO Leon Black paid Epstein $170 million over five years for purported tax and estate-planning advice. Wyden has asked why the payments were so large and referred his findings to the House Oversight Committee in which Black is currently in contempt for not testifying. These are findings and questions from a congressional investigation, not a finding that Apollo’s current funds engaged in Epstein’s abuse.

In February, the American Federation of Teachers and American Association of University Professors asked the SEC to investigate the accuracy of Apollo’s disclosures about its founders’ Epstein contacts. Apollo disputes the suggestion that its other leaders had business or personal relationships with Epstein even though CEO Marc Rowan is specifically referenced in the Epstein files.. It says Black retained him for personal tax work, that Black left Apollo in 2021, and that other Apollo personnel supplied information in connection with that work. A pension trustee should read the unions’ letter, Apollo’s response and the underlying records before deciding whether the manager’s disclosures and controls are satisfactory.

Sources: Senate Finance Committee; AFT/AAUP SEC request; Apollo response.

Three races for three seats at the pension table

Florida’s June 2026 pension investment policy states the governance plainly: the governor chairs the State Board of Administration; the chief financial officer and attorney general are its other two trustees. The board has responsibility for investing Florida Retirement System assets and delegates day-to-day management to its executive director. Trustees cannot pretend they are merely spectators.

Office	Leading major-party nominees	What voters should ask
Governor	Byron Donalds (R) and David Jolly (D)	Will you order a public review of Apollo exposure, performance, fees, liquidity and disclosure risk before voting on any new commitment?
Attorney general	James Uthmeier (R) and José Javier Rodríguez (D)	What records will you seek about manager diligence and what legal steps would you recommend if material disclosures prove inaccurate?
Chief financial officer	Blaise Ingoglia (R) and Annette Taddeo (D)	Will you demand a complete accounting of Apollo holdings, including partnerships not obvious from the headline asset-class totals?

Uthmeier and Ingoglia already hold trustee seats by virtue of their current offices; the governor’s seat is held by term-limited Ron DeSantis. The Florida Division of Elections lists the qualified candidates. Trustee responsibility is shared: the existence of a holding does not establish that a particular trustee personally selected it.

Sources: Florida SBA investment policy; Florida Division of Elections candidate list.

The Senate race belongs in this conversation too

Ashley Moody (R), Florida’s former attorney general and now U.S. senator, faces Angie Nixon (D). Moody previously held a seat on the state pension board while serving as attorney general. Neither Senate candidate would become an SBA trustee by winning this race. But both can tell Florida voters whether they will press Treasury, the SEC and congressional investigators to obtain the full financial record of Epstein’s operations and examine whether investors were given complete information about Apollo’s leadership contacts.

Ashley Moody, U.S. Senate. A 2026 FEC itemized receipt identifies Marc J. Rowan, employer “Apollo Mgmt,” occupation “CEO,” as a contributor to Moody for Florida and reports $14,000 election cycle to date in the February/March entries.

Sources: Florida Division of Elections candidate list; Senator Moody biography.

Florida has already written the rule the trustees should apply

Florida’s own investment policy says decisions must rest on pecuniary factors that materially affect risk and return; trustees may not sacrifice return or assume added risk to advance political goals. So the responsible response is not an automatic sale based on outrage. It is a documented review of manager integrity and disclosure risk, contractual rights, fees, valuation, liquidity, performance and the cost of an orderly exit. If those factors support divestment or refusing new commitments, trustees should act. If they reject it, they should publish a reasoned explanation that retirees can inspect.

Florida has taken explicit positions on divestment elsewhere, including restrictions involving companies that boycott Israel. The point here is consistency in scrutiny and public explanation, while applying the legal rules governing each type of investment.

Sources: Florida SBA investment policy; SBA global-governance mandates.

Five questions for every Florida candidate

1. What is the latest Florida pension market value and unfunded commitment for every Apollo-managed fund or account, directly or through a fund of funds?
2. How much has Florida paid Apollo and affiliates in management fees, carried interest and other expenses, and what net return did each mandate deliver against a relevant public-market equivalent?
3. Did SBA diligence assess the information in the Epstein files, the AFT/AAUP SEC request, Wyden’s investigation and Apollo’s response? Will the review be disclosed?
4. What contractual restrictions, secondary-market discounts or other costs would apply to an exit, and will the trustees stop new commitments while reviewing the facts?
5. Will you commit to a public vote or written determination explaining whether retaining these investments serves Florida retirees?
6. Review all the data center investments

Florida teachers, firefighters and other public employees have a right to those answers before the November election. The pension report establishes a real Apollo holding. The congressional and union inquiries establish a real diligence question. Now the candidates seeking control of Florida’s pension board should say what they intend to do about it.

1. What the pension disclosures actually show Apollo and Data Centers

Manager or strategy	Florida’s disclosed exposure	What the number means
Apollo Investment Funds IV–IX	$1.2 billion in combined original commitments	These are historical private equity commitments, dating from 1998–2019, in the March 31, 2026 SBA performance schedule. They must not be presented as $1.2 billion invested today.
Apollo Accord Fund VI	$26,590,431 market value	A separate active credit holding in the June 30, 2025 annual report, not one of the six private equity funds. Its current 2026 value requires a newer credit schedule.
Silver Lake Partners IV, V and VI	$311,527,969 combined NAV	Three named technology-focused private equity fund interests at March 31, 2026. This does not establish which portfolio companies or data centers Florida indirectly owns. SBA quarterly schedule.
Blue Owl Digital Infrastructure Fund III	$58,092,010 market value	Real estate position at June 30, 2025; SBA notes the manager name changed from IPI Partners III. SBA annual report.
Principal Data Center GI Fund	$90,480,219 market value	Real estate position at June 30, 2025. SBA annual report.
Principal Digital Real Estate Fund	$81,520,690 market value	Real estate position at June 30, 2025; “digital real estate” is broader than a verified list of data center properties. SBA annual report.

The three specifically named digital infrastructure/real estate funds have a combined reported value of $230,092,919 at June 30, 2025

By Chris Tobe | The CommonSense 401k Project | September 24, 2026

The Epstein files have entered Texas’s U.S. Senate race. James Talarico has stood with survivors and challenged Ken Paxton, the sitting attorney general and his Republican opponent, over the release of records. But voters should look beyond the Senate campaign. The governor’s race concerns the public money flowing into data centers and private capital. And the comptroller’s race features an extraordinary fact: the family of Don Huffines, Texas’s newly appointed comptroller and Republican nominee for a full term, owns Jeffrey Epstein’s former Zorro Ranch.

These are three different stories but are all tied to the Texas Republican establishment and the broader Epstein Class. They meet at the question of whether Texas officials will scrutinize powerful interests ie the Epstein Class as fiercely as they scrutinize ordinary taxpayers, teachers and school districts.  Will they even mention divestment from pensions prior to election even after Leon Blacks contempt of Congress https://commonsense401kproject.com/2026/09/08/the-market-has-put-a-price-on-apollos-conduct-with-jeffrey-epstein-public-pensions-should-finally-divest/

Senate: Survivors Want More Than a Campaign Prop

At September’s Epstein files exhibit in Dallas, Democrat Talarico challenged Paxton to meet with survivors and press for full disclosure. Democratic gubernatorial nominee Gina Hinojosa also appeared with survivors, according to reporting on the event. Paxton should explain what his office has done, what jurisdiction it believes it has, and what steps he would support in the Senate to release records while protecting survivors’ privacy. Talarico should publish his own concrete federal plan. The public deserves documents and action, not another election season of gestures.

Governor: Follow the Electricity, the Donors and the Pension Capital

As I documented in August, Greg Abbott promoted Texas’s data-center expansion before moving to police its effects on the grid. Hinojosa has challenged his donor relationships and the impact of data centers on household costs. Her campaign’s aggregate claim about data-center-linked contributions deserves an independently reproducible accounting; the underlying issue is real even without treating every dollar in that total as proved.

The financial circuit is worth investigating. Texas teachers’ pension money goes to private-market managers. Those managers can finance data centers, power plants and the infrastructure connecting them. The state can offer tax advantages and shape electricity policy. Major figures in energy, real estate and technology also contribute to campaigns. That sequence does not establish a quid pro quo, or show that a particular pension partnership financed a particular Texas data center. It tells voters exactly which records to demand.

Abbott welcomed Apollo Global Management’s Austin hub. Texas TRS has invested with Apollo, including a reported $400 million commitment to one Apollo fund. Apollo co-founder Leon Black paid Epstein more than $150 million for purported financial advice, including after Epstein’s conviction; Black is currently under Contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions.

Abbott also appointed Dan West of energy-focused private-equity firm SCF Partners to the TRS board. Private-investment experience can help a board. So can a trustee who insists on seeing every carried-interest charge, underlying holding and valuation assumption. Which view is missing?

Comptroller: The Ranch Owner Is Already in Office

The Texas Tribune reported that the Huffines family bought Zorro Ranch in 2023, four years after Epstein died. The campaign said it was purchased at a public auction whose proceeds benefited Epstein’s victims and that the family had never visited before it was listed. Abbott appointed Huffines comptroller after he won the Republican nomination; he took office August 1 and now faces Democratic state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt in November.

In March, New Mexico’s Department of Justice searched the ranch. Its statement is explicit: the investigation concerns alleged activity before Epstein died in 2019, and the department thanked the current owners for granting access. Ownership in 2023 does not establish a relationship with Epstein, knowledge of his crimes, or interference with investigators. An allegation in released files about possible burials is unverified; it cannot be presented as a discovery of remains or as evidence against the buyers.

Eckhardt has nevertheless made the purchase a campaign issue. Her campaign’s news page describes Huffines as the owner of Epstein’s former ranch, and she personally raised it with a reporter visiting the Dallas Epstein files exhibit. More pointedly, at a September campaign stop she criticized what she said were the removal of experienced comptroller staff who could investigate corporate tax avoidance and questionable contracts. She also used a metaphor about “burying the truth” at the ranch. Read her reported remarks here.

There is a separate, documentable story about how Huffines has begun to govern. The Texas Tribune found that numerous veteran staff members left or were pushed out. Huffines made Noah Betz—whose consulting firm received nearly $2.7 million from Huffines’s political operation since 2022, according to campaign filings—his top deputy at a salary of $306,000. Betz had graduated in 2023 and appeared to have no prior government or public-finance job. Huffines’s office defended its staffing decisions and said the team was improving the agency.

Before November, Take a Stance on Divestment – Open the Books

• Paxton and Talarico: Take a stance on divestment from Epstein linked Apollo for taxpayer funded pensions.State the specific federal records each would seek, which disclosures should protect survivors, and what authority a Texas attorney general has in the underlying investigations.
• Abbott and Hinojosa: Take a stance on divestment from Epstein linked Apollo for taxpayer funded pensions. Publish data-center subsidies, beneficial ownership, grid-cost allocation and major donors’ overlapping business interests. Have TRS report Apollo exposures and net returns after all fees, plus material look-through exposure to Texas data centers and power projects.
• Huffines and Eckhardt: Take a stance on divestment from Epstein linked Apollo for taxpayer funded pensions. Publish a dated account of senior comptroller departures, replacement qualifications, potential conflicts, corporate-tax enforcement and reviews of incentives. Huffines should describe the terms of access granted to New Mexico investigators; New Mexico has already publicly thanked the current owners for their cooperation.

Survivors deserve investigation and truth. Teachers deserve a pension system that shows them what it owns and what it pays. Households deserve to know who benefits when the grid bends toward data centers. Texas voters should demand all three before choosing their senator, governor and comptroller.

By Chris Tobe | | September 24, 2026

The Associated Press has put Leslie Wexner’s political money and Jeffrey Epstein at the center of Ohio’s U.S. Senate race. Good. But Ohioans should ask a larger question before they vote for senator and governor: Who gets rich from the state’s pension funds, public subsidies and electric grid, and who has the power to make them show their books?  While Jeffrey Epstein is dead many key members of his network what many call the Epstein Class are still active.  How do the leading candidates for Senate and Governor feel about divestment from Epstein linked Apollo in Ohio taxpayer funded pensions?

AP reports that Wexner contributed about $116,000 toward Jon Husted from 2001 through 2025, mostly during Husted’s state political career. That includes a $3,500 contribution to his Senate campaign in July 2025. Husted later joined Republicans who blocked a Democratic attempt to compel release of Epstein records; in November, he supported the stand-alone disclosure bill. Wexner testified that he never asked Husted to block disclosure.

Husted’s campaign has responded by pointing to donors to Sherrod Brown whose names appear in Epstein records, including Abigail Wexner and Larry Summers.  There are thousands of wealthy Americans and celebrities named in the Epstein files, Brown probably has far less Epstein linked donors than most US Senators.   This is a false flag.

Wexner says Epstein deceived him and denies knowledge of, or participation in, Epstein’s crimes. Survivors’ demands for answers deserve far more serious treatment than dueling campaign ads. AP recounts Maria Farmer’s allegation of a 1996 assault in New Albany, where Epstein had a house while working for Wexner. That is part of why this story matters in Ohio beyond television spots.

The pension trail AP’s election story leaves open

For decades, Wexner was a powerful Ohio political donor and Epstein’s major financial patron. A later, separate money relationship points to Apollo co-founder Leon Black, who paid Epstein more than $150 million for purported tax and estate services, including after Epstein’s 2008 conviction. Black has been held in contempt of congress for refusing to answer questions. These are the two major funders of Epstein as after Wexner slowed his financial support Black stepped up.   

But Ohio has an obligation to examine the public money in the second relationship. As I have documented, Ohio retirement systems have invested with Apollo-managed vehicles. My examination of Ohio’s Epstein blind spot and the STRS teacher-pension debate ask for a fund-by-fund accounting. Black is Apollo largest shareholder and stepped down from the CEO role in 2021 after disclosure of his millions paid to Epstein. 

How much did Ohio teachers, public employees and taxpayers pay Apollo-managed funds, by year and vehicle? What returns did each investment deliver after all fees? What exposure remains, and what would exiting an illiquid partnership cost? What due diligence was performed after the Black-Epstein payments became public and after the AFT and AAUP sought an SEC investigation in 2026?

The governor’s race is where these questions turn into decisions

Ohio’s governor appoints members of state pension boards and influences economic-development, utility and regulatory appointments. The choice between Vivek Ramaswamy and Amy Acton therefore matters to pension beneficiaries and households facing data-center electricity costs.

Ramaswamy brings particular disclosure questions. I previously examined his crypto holdings, Strive stake and the proposed Ohio cryptocurrency-reserve legislation. His interests and donors warrant careful conflict review whenever pension policy or state investment rules touch digital assets. Many of his donors are clearly in what people describe as in the Epstein class. Acton should face the same public-money test: name the trustees she would appoint, explain her standard for private-market fees and disclose how she would handle data-center subsidies and grid costs.

My data-center investigation describes the potential circular trade: public pensions invest with private-market managers; those managers finance data centers and power projects; communities supply tax benefits and infrastructure; households may pay higher utility costs. A follow-up traced campaign money and oversight questions involving Husted, Ramaswamy and Auditor Keith Faber.

Four disclosures voters should demand before November

1. Campaign money: Husted and Brown should publish a reconciled list of contributions they attribute to people in the Epstein files, stating each person’s actual documented relationship rather than using the word “associate” as a verdict. Ramaswamy and Acton should disclose major donors with financial interests in Ohio pension management, cryptocurrency, data centers, power generation and utilities.
2. Pension money: STRS, OPERS and the other state systems should disclose each Apollo-managed holding, commitment, current value, net return and total fees, including carried interest where available. Trustees should release the dates and conclusions of any updated manager review, with lawful redactions narrowly explained.
3. Data-center money: Publish the beneficial owners of projects receiving state tax benefits; estimated forgone tax revenue; promised jobs; electricity and water demand; and the allocation of grid costs among developers and ordinary customers. Identify any material pension exposure to the project, its financing or its owners when records permit.
4. Power over the money: Both gubernatorial candidates should commit to pension-board appointees who will demand these records and to clear recusal and disclosure rules for financial interests that overlap with state decisions. Senate candidates should state which federal transparency and investor-protection measures they will support.

Ohio voters deserve to know how their Senate and Governor candidates feel about divestment from Apollo holdings by taxpayer funded pensions. https://commonsense401kproject.com/2026/08/05/wydens-epstein-report-should-trigger-pension-divestment-from-jpmorgan-and-apollo/

Ohio has spent months debating who took a check from whom. The victims deserve justice, and voters deserve honest facts. The next question is larger: When the check comes out of teachers’ pensions, taxpayers’ subsidies or families’ electric bills, who follows it all the way to the recipient?

Editor’s sourcing note: The AP donation and voting account is linked above. The pension and data-center connections are subjects of my previously published investigations; the requested transaction-level fee and ownership disclosures remain unanswered. No inference of criminal participation follows from a donation, a mention in Epstein documents, a pension investment or a shared investment sector.