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Billionaire investor Leon Black has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington to block the House Oversight Committee’s subpoenas after he refused to appear for a scheduled deposition Thursday in the panel’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation.
Getting into it: The Apollo Global Management co-founder appeared voluntarily before the committee in June but walked out when lawmakers asked about nondisclosure agreements he had signed with women. Chairman James Comer hit him with two subpoenas the same day, one ordering him back for a videotaped deposition under oath and another for the NDAs. Black turned over one NDA, covering a woman he had an affair with and paid $9.5 million. Comer said one was not going to cut it. On Thursday the committee held the deposition anyway, with an empty chair where Black was supposed to sit.
The lawsuit argues the subpoenas exceed the committee’s delegated authority by seeking private information with “no legitimate connection” to its legislative purpose, and that handing over the NDAs would “expose women who value their privacy, who have no known or public connection to Epstein, who bargained for confidentiality and have refused to release it, and who have no ability to protect themselves and their privacy before the Committee.”
Black’s attorney Susan Estrich went further. “The Committee is on a fishing expedition that oversteps its authority and completely ignores its responsibility,” she said. “This is no longer about finding the truth about Epstein. It is about trying to destroy Mr. Black. We were left with no choice but to file this lawsuit in response to an abuse of Congressional power.” She also said Black never abused a woman, was never with an underage woman, never engaged in sex trafficking, never paid Epstein for access to women, and was never blackmailed by him.
Both parties on the committee want him held in contempt, though they are moving at different speeds. Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat, said that Black gave Epstein more than $180 million over six years and funded his abuse and trafficking of women, that multiple women have accused Black of sexual assault, and that Black paid $62.5 million to the US Virgin Islands to head off Epstein-related claims. “We must hold him in contempt immediately,” Garcia said.
Comer said he would hold Black in contempt if it were up to him but wants committee lawyers to weigh in first on whether a contempt push would cost them the NDAs. “I’m very disappointed. This is unacceptable. We need those nondisclosure agreements,” he said, adding in a statement that it’s a shame Black is hiding behind litigation rather than answering to the American people. A contempt citation would require a vote by the full House, then a referral to the US attorney in DC, who could take it to a grand jury.
This all comes after Black told the committee that he met Epstein in the 1990s and put him on the payroll as a wealth adviser in 2013, and paid him $158 million through 2017, work he said generated billions in tax savings. He said he hired Epstein partly for his connections, naming Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Steve Bannon, Thomas Barrack and others. He called Epstein a liar and said he regrets the association.
