The House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed Leon Black to give a sworn, videotaped deposition on 16 July 2026 and to produce nondisclosure agreements he signed with women, after he walked out of a voluntary interview about Jeffrey Epstein on 26 June.
Black's exit, roughly an hour into the transcribed interview and before Democrats had put a single question, was the first walkout in the committee's bipartisan inquiry, according to members present. The deposition tests whether a congressional subpoena binds a billionaire who has so far answered on his own terms.
Committee chair James Comer said Black refused to describe the terms of the nondisclosure agreements on the advice of counsel, and issued the two subpoenas during the interview. Comer told reporters the committee wants to know whether Epstein helped write the agreements and whether he helped decide the payments to the women. "We want to know, was Jeffrey Epstein involved in the NDAs?" Comer said. Black's attorney, Susan Estrich, called the move a planned political stunt and said Epstein had no involvement with any agreements, whether or not they exist.
Payments after the conviction
Black paid Epstein at least 158 million dollars between 2012 and 2017, after Epstein's 2008 guilty plea to soliciting prostitution from a minor, according to an external review commissioned by Apollo, a figure Black repeated in his opening statement. The Senate Finance Committee and Senator Ron Wyden have put the total nearer 170 million dollars, far more than Black paid other advisers on tax and estate work. Wyden said Black gave no credible explanation and "stonewalled repeatedly" on the committee's questions.
Black left Apollo in 2021 after the external review of his ties to Epstein. He has described the relationship as a horrible mistake and said Epstein deceived him, telling the committee he knew nothing of Epstein's crimes until the 2019 trafficking charges. In January 2023 Black paid the US Virgin Islands 62.5 million dollars to settle civil claims related to Epstein's network and gain immunity from criminal prosecution there. The settlement states it cannot be used as evidence of wrongdoing by Black, and it does not cover claims by anyone else against him.
Allegations in the files
One woman told the FBI that Black became sexual during a massage Epstein had directed her to give, before she fled the room, CNN reported in an April 2026 review of the released Justice Department files. A second woman told the bureau in 2020 that Black had raped her about six years earlier, and described going with Black to Epstein's Florida home, where she said she was told to have sex with Epstein.
A 2019 prosecution memo written after Epstein's death, which examined whether associates including Black bore criminal liability, recorded a woman saying they engaged in sexual contact with her against her will during massages, according to the memo. Large parts of it are redacted. Three women have separately accused Black of rape in lawsuits since 2022. A judge dismissed one, a plaintiff agreed to drop a second, and a third, brought by a woman her lawyers say has autism and a form of Down syndrome and was 16 at the time, remains pending after her law firm withdrew from representing her.
Black has not been charged with any crime and denies every allegation. "I have never abused a woman. I have never been with an underage woman," he told the committee in his opening statement. He said the release of the Epstein files "added fuel to the burning conspiracies and falsities" and that he had received death threats and hired a bodyguard for the first time in his life. Estrich has said Black "has never abused, assaulted, or raped any girl or woman" and called the lawsuits frivolous.
The agreements the committee wants
The subpoenaed agreements are between Black and women in Epstein's orbit, and lawmakers said they want to establish whether Epstein shaped them or funded the payouts. Robert Garcia, the committee's ranking Democrat, backed the subpoenas and told reporters "there are survivors who have accused Mr. Black of horrific things". Comer said before the interview he was confident Black had signed agreements with some of Epstein's victims.
Only Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell have been charged with trafficking in the case, and FBI Director Kash Patel has said there is no credible information that Epstein trafficked his victims to other people. The Justice Department has released 3.5 million pages of Epstein files and withheld about 2.5 million more, and is fighting a separate court order to unredact the names of alleged co-conspirators in a 2007 draft indictment.
One subpoena compels Black's sworn, videotaped testimony on 16 July, the other the agreements themselves. Should Black decline to appear or to hand them over, the committee's next step is a vote on whether to hold him in contempt.
