▶ Watch Video: Billionaire Leon Black subpoenaed to return to House Epstein committee, Comer says
Not long after billionaire Leon Black arrived Friday to testify voluntarily before members of Congress investigating Jeffrey Epstein, he was told to come back and try again — under subpoena.
Black, the co-founder of Apollo Global Management, who employed and was close to the notorious sex abuser, refused to answer questions about nondisclosure agreements during the transcribed interview, according to the Rep. James Comer, the House Oversight Committee’s chairman.
The Kentucky Republican said he issued two subpoenas to Black on the spot. The first requires Black to appear for another deposition on July 16, and the other requires him to produce nondisclosure agreements to the committee. His July testimony will be videotaped and under oath.
Black employed Epstein as a wealth management adviser, but also allegedly confided in him about personal matters, including extramarital affairs that ended in nondisclosure agreements.
“This is a result of refusing to answer specific questions about the NDAs, and the terms. We believe that information is vital to our investigation,” Comer told reporters Friday.
“We want to know, was Jeffrey Epstein involved in the NDAs? Was he involved in writing? Was he involved in awarding funds to the women for the NDAs? What was the reason for the NDA? We want to know everything about the NDAs,” Comer said.
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Susan Estrich, an attorney for Black, decried the subpoenas as “a planned political stunt.”
“Mr. Epstein had no involvement with any NDA’s, whether they exist or not. Let me reiterate, the Committee did not ask a single question about the legitimate payments to Epstein for professional services on tax and estate matters,” Estrich said. “I want to be clear. As Mr. Black said in his opening statement, he never abused a woman. He never was with an underage woman. He never engaged in sex trafficking. He never paid Epstein for access to women. He was never blackmailed by Epstein. Mr. Black had no knowledge of any of Epstein’s heinous conduct.”
The committee’s ranking member, California Democrat Rep. Robert Garcia, described Black in a press release as “storming out” of the interview.
“Leon Black had a chance to do the right thing and help us bring justice to the survivors. Instead, he ran out of the room when he was pressed for information about his non-disclosure agreements with women and his relationship with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein,” Garcia said.
In Black’s opening statement, he said he first met Epstein in the 1990s, and he began paying him for wealth management advice in 2013. Black said he feels “terrible for Epstein’s victims.”
“I want to state clearly that I did not know about this nefarious activity until Epstein was charged with trafficking in July 2019,” Black said. “I did know that Epstein pleaded guilty in June 2008 to state charges relating to prostitution involving a minor. Epstein told me that it was an isolated incident resulting from a fake ID. Five years after his conviction, I gave Epstein a second chance, as did many others. I wish I had not.”
Black said he employed Epstein in part because of his prolific network of relationships with powerful people. Black listed in his opening statement self-help guru Deepak Chopra; U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Thomas Barrack; billionaire Thomas Pritzker; LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; former Goldman Sachs executive and Obama White House lawyer Kathy Ruemmler; the world’s richest person Elon Musk; Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Microsoft founder Bill Gates; former President Bill Clinton; billionaire Peter Thiel; Trump confidant Steve Bannon; and banker Ariane de Rothschild, among others.
Black compared Epstein to “Jekyll and Hyde.” When he hired Epstein in 2013, Black said, he “appeared to me and to many others to have redeemed himself.” He said Epstein “solved a massive estate problem for me, that none of the experts and lawyers I consulted had been able to solve.”
“I knew Jekyll. I didn’t know Hyde,” Black said. Describing a dark side to Epstein, he said Epstein lied about the supposed tax benefits that came with paying him extraordinary sums.
“With hindsight, I now see that Epstein exaggerated, embellished, manipulated, and outright lied — prolifically and without concern for me or my family,” Black said. “And I now see that his deceit was not limited to me but also extended to numerous highly sophisticated individuals. Epstein took credit for other people’s ideas. He falsely claimed to have been involved in decisions about investments.”
Earlier this month, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote to the Oversight Committee demanding they ask Black about some $170 million in payments to Epstein between 2012 and 2017. In Black’s opening statement, he tallied the figure at $158 million.
“To date, I do not believe Black has provided a credible explanation as to why he paid Epstein amounts that vastly exceeded those paid to other professional advisors involved in his tax and estate planning,” the Oregon senator wrote.
Wyden also wrote to Black in March to demand answers to questions arising from revelations in the Epstein files about his “significant personal and financial entanglements with Epstein.”
On Thursday, asked whether Black had responded to his letter, Wyden said, “He stonewalled repeatedly. We just haven’t gotten the answers that are responsive.”
Garcia called the sum “an enormous amount of money.”
“Jeffrey Epstein would not have been able to commit his horrific crimes without the support of Mr. Black,” Garcia said. His Democratic colleague from Virginia, Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, said in a social media video that Black was “a central figure in Jeffrey Epstein’s empire.”
An attorney for Black wrote in an April letter to Wyden that documents released this year under the Epstein Files Transparency Act “do not contain any credible evidence that Mr. Black was aware of, or involved with, Mr. Epstein’s then-ongoing criminal activities.”
Another of his attorneys told CBS News in December that an internal investigation at Apollo “concluded that Mr. Black paid Epstein for estate planning and tax advice, no more, no less.”
In Black’s opening statement, he also accused the media of “racing” to cover “sensational allegations” against him, “taking them at face value without conducting any investigation or undertaking even minimal diligence.”
Emails released by the committee last year document that Epstein was involved in Black’s personal matters while providing wealth management advice. Black had a six-year affair with a former Russian model, which ended in acrimony and allegations of abuse, according to court records.
As Black prepared a nondisclosure agreement in 2015 to secure the model’s silence, Epstein offered him advice, including suggesting in an email that Black hire former law enforcement officers to approach her.
“Choose method of message delivery, my choice. – two highly respected former —- fill in the blank, immigration, scotland yard. sfo. . who may knock on her door and present the terms,” Epstein wrote. His writing frequently eschewed basic grammar and punctuation.
The model’s nondisclosure agreement broke down four years later, leading to a series of lawsuits and countersuits. Court filings show Black discussed the agreement with just two people: Epstein and a private investigator.
The internal investigation at Apollo, which was conducted by the law firm Dechert LLP, concluded that while Black had “confided” in Epstein about personal matters, he paid Epstein for wealth management. The investigators wrote “that Black genuinely believed that Epstein was extremely smart, capable, and saved him substantial amounts of money.”
Black is among several billionaires to testify before the House Oversight Committee, which also interviewed Gates, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and businessmen Les Wexner.
Others who are expected to be interviewed in the next month include Ruemmler, and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and former JPMorgan Chase executive Jes Staley.