Instead of sitting for a sworn deposition before the House Oversight Committee, Leon Black, the Apollo co-founder and longtime Jeffrey Epstein client, filed a lawsuit to block the subpoenas.
Chairman James Comer put an empty chair in the room and charges that the billionaire is hiding behind lawyers rather than answering to the American people.
Black paid Epstein around $158 million between 2012 and 2017 for what he still insists were ordinary tax and estate-planning services — years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor.
He appeared voluntarily in June, delivered a statement denying any knowledge of Epstein’s “heinous conduct,” then refused to discuss the nondisclosure agreements he signed with women.
The committee served two subpoenas on the spot. Thursday’s deposition was the follow-up. Black chose court instead.
“It’s a shame Leon Black is hiding behind litigation rather than provide answers to the American people,” Comer said, adding “Our investigation is examining how the federal government for decades failed survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s crimes and how Mr. Epstein sought to curry favor with influential individuals to avoid scrutiny.”
Black’s lawyer, Susan Estrich, called the committee’s effort “a fishing expedition that oversteps its authority.” In June she branded the original subpoenas a “planned political stunt” and insisted Epstein “had no involvement with any NDAs, whether they exist or not.”
The committee wants those NDAs. Comer has been explicit: “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 NDA? What was the reason for the NDAs?”
More than a dozen Epstein survivors released a letter this week demanding Black appear and produce the agreements.
The letter stated that “If Black continues to withhold responsive records or refuses to comply with the committee’s demands, Congress should use every tool available to enforce its subpoenas.”
Black has said: “I have never abused a woman. I have never been with an underage woman. I have never engaged in sex trafficking.” He added that he “never paid Epstein for access to women,” “was never blackmailed by Epstein,” and “was not involved with, and had no knowledge of, any of Epstein’s heinous conduct.”
He has described Epstein as Jekyll and Hyde: “I knew Jekyll. I didn’t know Hyde.”
The files and earlier reporting tell a longer story of money, access, and concealment that did not start with this deposition.
A 2021 review commissioned by Apollo found Black paid Epstein $158 million over five years. Some accounts put the figure higher when loans and other transfers are included. Epstein advised Black on personal matters as well as tax work, including how to handle issues that had arisen with women.
Reporting based on the released files and congressional notes has described roughly $20 million paid to a dozen women. Black has faced civil lawsuits alleging abuse; he has denied them, two were resolved without findings against him, and one remains pending. He has not been charged criminally.
The NDAs sit at the center of the current fight because they are the documents the committee cannot see. Black walked out of the June interview rather than discuss them. Now he is asking a court to keep them private. That is the opposite of the transparency survivors and the committee say they need.
This pattern of elite institutions treating Epstein as a useful, if embarrassing, donor is not new. In 2019 Ronan Farrow documented how MIT’s Media Lab concealed the depth of its relationship with Epstein even after he was listed as “disqualified” in the university’s donor database.
Internal emails showed Epstein directing gifts far beyond the modest sums MIT had publicly acknowledged. One email from then-director Joi Ito described “a $2M gift from Bill Gates directed by Jeffrey Epstein.”
Another described $5.5 million from Leon Black, likewise treated as directed by Epstein and recorded anonymously so his name would not appear. Staff used initials, called him “Voldemort,” and discussed taking “small gifts anonymously” to avoid reporting.
Peter Cohen instructed colleagues: “For gift recording purposes, we will not be mentioning Jeffrey’s name as the impetus for this gift.” Ito later resigned.
The lab knew exactly who Epstein was. It took the money anyway and then worked to keep the paper trail quiet. Black’s later $158 million professional relationship with Epstein sits in the same ecosystem: prestige institutions and billionaire clients treating a convicted sex offender as a fixer, advisor, and rainmaker long after the public record should have made that impossible.
The same files and subsequent reviews show Bill Gates and Gates Foundation staff met with Epstein roughly 30 times between 2011 and 2014. An external review by WilmerHale, commissioned by the foundation after the latest document dump, found staff “raised on multiple occasions the risks of associating with Epstein because of his prior conviction.”
Those concerns reached senior leadership, including Gates. Meetings included visits to Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse and one on the foundation campus. The review found no evidence of payments to Epstein or illegal conduct by the foundation.
Gates has called the association a “grave error in judgment” and “one of the larger mistakes I’ve made.” He has said he was introduced through people he trusted, that Epstein claimed he could raise billions for global health from wealthy clients, and that the effort was a “complete dead end.” He has denied knowledge of ongoing criminal conduct. The review still established that warnings were given and meetings continued.
The elite habit was consistent: treat Epstein as a problem to be managed privately rather than a reason to walk away.
The same document releases pulled another Silicon Valley name into the orbit. Emails show Cami Clark — who later married Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and has been described as a sounding board and strategic adviser — corresponding with Epstein in 2011 and 2012 about a “free luxury porn company” she was developing with a partner.
After an introduction by literary agent John Brockman, she followed up: “We have the free luxury porn company. Does that ring a bell?” Epstein replied, “Yes, a loud gong.” She later asked about investment. Epstein declined, writing that he “Can’t do sex TV” There is no indication in the published emails that he invested. The contact predates her marriage to Amodei.
The point is not that Anthropic ran a trafficking ring. The point is how ordinary it was, even after 2008, for people in elite networks to treat Epstein as a potential investor, dinner companion, or connector. The files keep turning up the same pattern: introductions, pitches, and social access that would have been radioactive for anyone outside the club.
In July, French authorities confirmed that modeling scout Daniel Siad, whose name appears thousands of times in the Epstein files, was found dead at his home near Paris. He had been under investigation in a French human-trafficking probe opened after the U.S. document release.
Multiple women had accused him of rape and trafficking; he denied the allegations. Prosecutors said there had not been sufficient evidence to arrest him before his death.
He is another figure who corresponded with Epstein about young women and models and who will never sit for the questions investigators still have.
Epstein himself died in custody. Jean-Luc Brunel died in a French jail. Associates keep exiting the story before the full record is on the table. Survivors and congressional investigators are left with documents, empty chairs, and lawsuits.
Black’s decision to sue rather than testify under oath fits a larger picture. Powerful men paid Epstein enormous sums, accepted his introductions, used him as a problem-solver, and then described themselves as duped when the files came out.
Universities hid the source of the money. Foundation staff raised alarms and were overridden. Tech and finance circles kept the social and financial doors open. When Congress finally issues compulsory process, the response is litigation and an empty chair.
Comer said Black’s testimony is crucial because he was one of Epstein’s fee-paying clients and holds several NDAs. Black’s public position is that the NDAs are private, irrelevant, and none of Epstein’s business. The committee’s position is that the public cannot know whether that is true until the documents are produced and the witness is under oath.
Two-tier justice is not an abstract slogan when a man who transferred nine figures to a convicted sex offender can skip a congressional deposition and file a lawsuit instead. The files already showed how Epstein bought access, silence, and prestige. The current fight is about whether that system still works.
Contempt remains on the table. So does the lawsuit. The NDAs are still unproduced. The survivors are still waiting.
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