Leon Black sued the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on 3 September 2026 to void two subpoenas seeking his confidentiality agreements and his testimony, then skipped the deposition the panel had scheduled for that morning.

Committee members held a closed-door session in Room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building with a chair set aside for the absent billionaire.

Democrats on the panel called for the committee to hold Black in contempt immediately, which would make him the first private witness the panel has moved against in its Epstein investigation.

Black is the only figure questioned in that investigation to answer a subpoena with a lawsuit, chairman James Comer said on Thursday. Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Jes Staley and Kathryn Ruemmler all sat for transcribed interviews.

Black paid Epstein $170 million, the total the Senate Finance Committee traced in March 2025, $12 million more than the review Apollo Global Management commissioned found.

The complaint, docketed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia as 1:26-cv-03084, names the committee and Comer in his official capacity. Susan Estrich of Estrich Goldin and four lawyers from Hogan Lovells signed it.

"The Committee is on a fishing expedition that oversteps its authority," Estrich said in a statement.

Three counts run through the filing: that the subpoenas are ultra vires and exceed the committee's delegated authority, that they lack a valid legislative purpose and that the committee's threatened federal-court enforcement is itself beyond its power. Black asks the court to declare both subpoenas null and to enjoin the committee from enforcing them.

The June interview

Comer wrote to Black on 3 March 2026 asking him to appear voluntarily, and identified the investigation's subjects as Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, trafficking, alleged federal investigative failures and potential ethics issues involving elected officials.

Black's lawyers held four calls and meetings with majority staff before the interview, on 24 March, 8 April, 28 April and 22 June. Staff told them the committee would work from public material, the Epstein files releases, records obtained from the Epstein estate, the 2021 Dechert report and news coverage, and that it was not running a fishing expedition, according to the complaint. Confidentiality agreements never came up in any of those discussions.

Comer told reporters minutes before the 26 June interview began that the committee would focus on two subjects: the agreements and suspicious activity reports filed by banks.

Black read an opening statement denying that he had ever abused a woman, been with an underage woman, trafficked anyone, paid Epstein for access to women or been blackmailed by Epstein.

"I did not know about this nefarious activity until Epstein was charged," Black told the committee, dating his knowledge to July 2019.

Less than an hour in, staff turned to the agreements. Black's counsel objected. Comer had the two subpoenas served on the spot, and Black walked out. The interview adjourned at 12.22 p.m.

Cover letters accompanying the subpoenas said the agreements were relevant to understanding how trafficking rings operate, what impedes federal investigations of them and how Epstein and Maxwell might have held influence over associates. The complaint says the subpoenas and letters were drafted before the interview started.

The subpoena

The subpoena sought every agreement to which Black is or was a party containing any confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-use or secrecy obligation, every such agreement involving Epstein or Maxwell, and every one in which either was referenced or involved in drafting, execution or enforcement.

Black answered in writing on 24 July that he holds no records responsive to the Epstein and Maxwell categories. He produced one agreement, the 2015 settlement with Guzel Ganieva, as the only document that fits the committee's theory of relevance.

Epstein played a consulting role in the discussions over Ganieva's demands, Black's response said, and that role was already public through the Epstein files.

Black's lawyers offered on 18 August to hand over one further record, described in the complaint as a private settlement of a public legal claim. The committee rejected the offer the same day, demanded full compliance and warned it would use all tools at its disposal, including contempt.

Black's NDAs

Black described the Ganieva settlement to the committee in June as the end of a six-year consensual affair with a woman who had demanded $100 million from him. The terms he gave were $100,000 a month for 15 years, forgiveness of a $1 million loan and £2 million.

Epstein was not involved in negotiating it, Black said, though he told Epstein at the time that he was being blackmailed and extorted.

A second agreement covers a woman Black said he has never met, whose case was dismissed with prejudice. He told the committee there is no confidentiality agreement covering a third woman.

Black's filing argues that compelled production would expose women who bargained for confidentiality, have refused to release it and have no way to protect their privacy before the committee.

Black paid millions of dollars to women he had sexual relationships with, some of them connected to Epstein, and required them to sign strict agreements to keep them quiet, Robert Garcia of California, the panel's ranking Democrat, said in a statement on Thursday.

"By refusing to testify today, Leon Black is now defying two Congressional subpoenas," Garcia said.

Garcia called the lawsuit laughable and said the committee has evidence Black paid Epstein at least $180 million, above both the $158 million Apollo disclosed in 2021 and the Senate Finance Committee's traced total.

Epstein's work for Black

Black met Epstein in the mid-1990s, a few years after he co-founded Apollo, and the dealings between them turned commercial around 2012, according to the New York Times.

Ghislaine Maxwell assembled a three-volume album for Epstein's 50th birthday in 2003, and Black contributed a poem about the women in Epstein's life, signed off with love and kisses and called Epstein his best friend. Black told the committee in June that the two were not close friends, and that he valued Epstein's expertise and contacts.

Donald Trump's contribution to the same album, a typed exchange framed by the outline of a female nude and ending on a line about another wonderful secret, sits in its friends section with Black's poem and one from Bill Clinton. Trump has denied writing it. House Oversight subpoenaed the Epstein estate and published the album on 8 September 2025.

Black paid about $20 million to roughly a dozen women, part of it routed through Epstein, according to the New York Times.

Irina Chernova received $28,000 through Epstein in October 2017 when she was expecting $100,000, according to emails Senator Ron Wyden released, which record her asking Epstein not to tell Black she had raised it. Black's earlier payments to her ran directly from Bank of America accounts from 2009.

Epstein hired investigators from Nardello & Co to follow Ganieva, arranged recordings of her meetings at the Four Seasons, Le Bernardin and the Modern, and drafted messages invoking Russian security services, the same records show.

Brad Karp, then chairman of Paul Weiss, traded surveillance detail with Epstein about a woman's movements, the tinted windows of the car she left in and its licence plates, according to emails in Wyden's 4 June 2026 letter to House Oversight. Epstein wrote to Karp a month later that Black wanted it nailed down that she was a professional.

Paul Weiss billed Black roughly $2 million for estate planning across 2013 and 2014. He paid Epstein $120 million in the same two years.

$100 million of the total moved between 2014 and 2017 with no written contracts, and $10 million ran through a charity Wyden's staff described as a sham that let Black avoid disclosure and maximise deductions, the letter said.

The payments

Apollo's board commissioned Dechert LLP to review Black's dealings with Epstein and published the result on 22 January 2021. The firm found Black paid Epstein $158 million between 2012 and 2017 for tax and estate planning, that the work saved him between $1 billion and $2 billion, and that he had no awareness of or involvement in Epstein's crimes.

Committee lawyers challenged the review's independence in June, telling Black that the lawyer who conducted it had a relationship with Epstein. Black said he did not know that.

Black stepped down as Apollo chief executive in March 2021, months ahead of the schedule announced when the report landed.

He told the committee in June that Epstein cheated him out of more than $60 million in advisory fees by falsely claiming they were tax deductible.

A major U.S. bank took seven years to report Black's payments to the Treasury, Senator Ron Wyden's Finance Committee staff found. The settlement document Wyden released records that Epstein used Black's money to partly fund his operations in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Black paid the U.S. Virgin Islands $62.5 million in 2023 to close out potential claims arising from the territory's Epstein investigation, with immunity extending to his lawyers and agents. The payments to Epstein ran for nine years after Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.

Epstein killed himself in a federal jail in New York in August 2019, weeks after his arrest on federal charges of trafficking girls. He was 66.

Thomas Massie named Black on the House floor on 31 August 2026 as one of 14 people he said should be investigated and prosecuted as Epstein co-conspirators, using the speech or debate clause protection that shields members from defamation suits over floor remarks.

Apollo, Kushner and the Trump White House

Apollo lent Kushner Companies $184 million in November 2017 to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper, triple its average property loan, the New York Times found. Black was Apollo's chairman and chief executive at the time.

Josh Harris, who co-founded Apollo with Black, met Jared Kushner several times at the White House during 2017 while Kushner ran the administration's infrastructure work, and the two discussed a job for Harris in the administration.

The Securities and Exchange Commission closed an inquiry into how Apollo reported the results of its private equity funds about a month after the loan went through. Apollo said Harris discussed no loan, investment, business arrangement or regulatory matter with Kushner, and that the loan cleared the firm's standard approval process. A spokesman for Kushner said he had no role at his family's firm after joining the administration and followed the ethics advice he was given.

Tom Carper, Elizabeth Warren and Gary Peters wrote to Kushner Companies and the White House counsel's office on 5 March 2018 asking for the terms of the loan.

Marc Rowan, the third Apollo co-founder and its chief executive since 2021, emailed Kushner and other Trump policy officials in April 2020 asking that the Federal Reserve's $100 billion Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility be widened to cover investment-grade debt of the kind Apollo held.

Trump considered Rowan for Treasury secretary in November 2024, and on 16 January 2026 named him to the executive board of the Gaza Board of Peace alongside Kushner, Steve Witkoff, Marco Rubio and Tony Blair.

Rowan and his wife gave at least $1 million to Trump Victory in 2020. Black's giving in the 2016 cycle ran to both parties, $250,000 to the Democratic Senate Majority PAC and $150,000 to the Republican Congressional Leadership Fund, and fell to roughly $100,000 in the 2020 cycle, split between Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton, Chris Coons and Mark Warner, Forbes found in its review of federal records.

The Epstein files and the Justice Department

The Justice Department released millions of pages of Epstein records on 30 January 2026 under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general and previously Trump's personal defence lawyer, blocked the Drug Enforcement Administration from giving Wyden an unredacted 2015 memo on Operation Chain Reaction, which examined illegitimate wire transfers tied to Epstein and 14 other people and entities, Wyden said on 18 March 2026.

House Oversight subpoenaed the attorney general in March 2026 over the department's compliance with the transparency act.

Republican staff on the committee wrote in a 16 November 2025 memo that the panel's Democrats were pursuing an anti-Trump hoax in the Epstein investigation.

The case still running

Three women have sued Black for rape. He claims the accusations are baseless and fabricated.

Ganieva's suit was dismissed. So was a 2023 claim that Black raped an autistic teenager at Epstein's Manhattan townhouse, withdrawn with prejudice in February 2024.

Doe v. Black is live in the Southern District of New York before Judge Jessica Clarke. The plaintiff alleges Black raped her in 2002, when she was 16, after Epstein and Maxwell groomed and trafficked her.

Clarke issued a 76-page sanctions ruling on 24 April 2026 finding that the plaintiff falsified sonogram images in journals offered as evidence and deleted a relevant social media account, and that her lawyer Jeanne Christensen of Wigdor LLP lied repeatedly to the court and to opposing counsel and directed the deletion. Clarke barred the journals, ordered Wigdor to pay Black's fees on the motion and required Christensen to file the ruling in her other Second Circuit cases for a year.

Clarke declined to end the case, holding that lesser sanctions could address the misconduct, and said the jury will be instructed about the falsifications. Black's court filing describes the third woman as sanctioned without noting that her claims survive.

Clarke has also refused to dismiss the assault claims under New York City's Gender Motivated Violence Act. A Second Circuit panel certified the question of whether state revival statutes pre-empt the city law to the New York Court of Appeals on 23 March 2026, and the answer will decide whether the case reaches trial.

Enforcement

Criminal contempt under 2 U.S.C. 192 carries up to a year in jail and a fine, and reaching it takes a committee vote, a House vote and certification by the Speaker to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, who then decides whether to prosecute.

Comer said he wants advice from committee counsel before moving, to protect the panel's chances of obtaining the documents.

"I would hold him in contempt right now," Comer said.

28 U.S.C. 1365, the statute permitting a chamber to sue a defiant witness, covers the Senate alone, so the House must adopt a resolution authorising litigation before a committee can go to court. Count III of Black's complaint attacks that gap, arguing the committee cannot make good on its threat.

Inherent contempt, under which a chamber directs its sergeant at arms to detain a witness until compliance, has lain unused since the 1930s.

Eastland v. United States Servicemen's Fund, decided by the Supreme Court in 1975, held that the speech or debate clause barred a suit to enjoin a Senate subcommittee subpoena, on the reasoning that issuing subpoenas is an integral part of the legislative process and that members and their aides are immune from suits to stop it. Black is suing a committee and its chairman, the same posture the court rejected then.

Congress passed the Speak Out Act in 2022, making pre-dispute confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses unenforceable in sexual assault and harassment disputes. That statute does not reach settlement agreements signed after a dispute arises, the category the Ganieva agreement falls into, and the committee can point to the difference as the subject of possible legislation.

Garcia said the contempt process has to begin now, and that Black timed his filing to the September recess to slow the investigation down. Comer said he would consult the panel's lawyers first.