James Comer

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair James Comer issued two subpoenas to billionaire investor Leon Black on Friday after he refused to answer questions about nondisclosure agreements with women in the panel's probe into late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“Answers about the terms and substance of these NDAs are critical to our investigation. For this reason, today I issued subpoenas to Mr. Black for NDAs and to appear for a deposition in the near future. We owe it to the American people to provide transparency and ensure accountability for survivors,” Comer said in a statement, The Hill reported.

“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 NDAs? We want to know everything about the NDAs, so that’s very important to our investigation,” Comer told reporters after Black's voluntary interview.

One of the subpoenas requires Black to appear before the panel on July 16 for a deposition, while the other requires him to produce the NDAs to the committee.

Black is the former CEO of private equity firm Apollo Global Management.

In his opening remarks to the committee, Black said that he “was not involved with, and had no knowledge of, any of Epstein’s heinous conduct,” according to a copy obtained by The New York Times.

Black’s lawyer, Susan Estrich, told reporters that lawmakers “made a premeditated political decision to serve him with subpoenas after less than an hour of questioning.”

“This was nothing more than a planned political stunt. Mr. Epstein had no involvement with any NDAs, whether they exist or notI 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,” Estrich said.

In 2022, a woman filed a lawsuit accusing Black of raping her and alleging that Epstein helped facilitate the attack. Black’s legal counsel denied the allegations at the time, and he stepped down from his role at Apollo after they became public.

“We know some of the stuff that’s publicly out there about him having mistresses, about him having these NDAs, about people being afraid of him, but we want him to answer the tough questions about what he knew about Jeffrey Epstein, his relationship, and whether he was involved in some of the crimes himself,” Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.), who serves on the House Oversight Committee, told reporters.