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The United States House of Representatives has held Leon Black in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena in its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
The measure passed by unanimous consent, meaning no member objected and no recorded vote was needed. It refers the matter to the Justice Department, which now decides whether to prosecute him criminally.
What Black refused to hand over were non-disclosure agreements he may have signed, along with an on-camera deposition under oath. The House Oversight Committee issued the subpoenas after he walked out of voluntary testimony in June, when lawmakers began asking about those agreements.
James Comer, who chairs the committee, said nobody is above the law, and that it would continue seeking transparency for the American people and justice for survivors.
Black's lawyers called the contempt finding outrageous. They said it ignores the facts and the truth about him, and that the full House acted without any regard to the active litigation challenging the lawfulness of the committee's actions, or to an ethics complaint filed against Comer himself.
Robert Garcia, the committee's senior Democrat, called it an important step toward justice and accountability, and said members would continue to centre survivors in the effort to hold those responsible for the crimes to account.
Black had already gone to court. He sued the committee and Comer in federal court in Washington, arguing they exceeded their constitutional authority and describing the inquiry as an unlawful fishing expedition into private information with no legitimate legislative purpose.
The money is what drew the committee to him. Black told lawmakers in June that he paid Epstein $158 million, about £118 million, and that he hired him as a wealth management adviser for legitimate reasons. A review commissioned by his own firm put the payments between 2012 and 2017 at the same figure, covering tax, estate and asset planning work. He has said he knew nothing of Epstein's crimes until Epstein was charged with sex trafficking in July 2019.
Those disclosures ended his career at the firm he built. Black stepped down as chief executive and chairman of Apollo Global Management in 2021 amid scrutiny of the relationship, having co-founded the company in 1990. He retains a substantial stake in it, and Forbes valued his fortune at $14.7 billion on Sept. 4.
He has denied any wrongdoing throughout.
A contempt referral does not oblige the Justice Department to act. Prosecutors have discretion over whether to bring charges, and referrals against private citizens have often gone nowhere. What it does is move the dispute from a civil courtroom, where Black chose to fight it, into the hands of an executive agency he does not control.
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