Business magnate Leon Black on Thursday pressed against the House oversight committee’s attempt to investigate him as part of its Jeffrey Epstein inquiry, filing a lawsuit challenging the panel’s move to summon him for testimony and unearth his nondisclosure agreements. Black, who helped found private equity behemoth Apollo Global…
Page A3From§Eachthe early evening edition — 3 September 2026
Sue the subpoena if you can afford the lawyers; get charged with contempt if you can't.
As it ran on the front
On Monday, a member of Congress stood on the House floor and read off the names of more than a dozen people he called Epstein "coconspirators." The reading was itself the news: after years of promises about the Epstein files, someone finally said names out loud, in public, on the record, in a chamber that mostly talks around this case.
That same week gave the House two more pieces of business worth setting side by side. In one, allies of a former House Democrat are facing criminal charges from the Justice Department, after the House voted unanimously to hold them in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer a subpoena. Contempt vote, then a unanimous House, then a DOJ referral — the ordinary machinery, working exactly as it's built to work.…
…(cont) In the other, a private equity billionaire named Leon Black is sitting on two subpoenas from the House Oversight Committee, one ordering him to testify in the Epstein inquiry, the other ordering him to hand over nondisclosure agreements the committee wants to see. Black didn't show up and didn't turn anything over. He filed a lawsuit instead, arguing the committee doesn't have the authority to make him do either one.
Two subpoenas, two responses, two landing spots. One path runs through a contempt vote and a criminal referral. The other runs through federal court, where a case can sit for years, get appealed, get narrowed, or get settled on terms the filing never has to explain. Both paths are legal. Only one of them is available to a defendant who can pay for the kind of lawyers who know how to file the second kind of lawsuit.
Nobody broke a law by being rich, and nothing here accuses Black of a crime — a lawsuit against a congressional committee isn't a crime, it's a service, and like any service it's priced. The subpoena says come testify. The lawsuit says we'll see you in court. The distance between those two sentences is the whole story: the question was never whether you get to say no to Congress, it's what saying no costs, and who's got the balance sheet to cover it.
That's the shape of Congress's own Epstein investigation right now. One branch of it reads names off the House floor into a record everyone can check. Another branch spends its week trying to get a subpoena answered by a man with the money to make sure it never has to be.
“A congressman reads Epstein names on the floor same week a billionaire gets to hire lawyers instead of showing up — that's not two stories, that's one story about which subpoena you can afford to lose. The committee unanimously voted contempt and a DOJ charge for the ones without the retainer; the one with the retainer got a federal lawsuit and a delay clock. Congress can subpoena you all it wants — whether you answer or you litigate depends entirely on the number in your bank account.”
“Leon Black is exercising a basic constitutional right to challenge government overreach in federal court, same as anyone would. Every subpoena has to survive a legal test, that's not stonewalling, that's due process. Look, I'm not saying the two cases are identical, I'm saying — well, actually maybe I am saying that, and that's a problem for me.”
The receipts
The billionaire investor is under two subpoenas from the House Oversight Committee. But in his lawsuit, Black says the panel doesn't have the authority to compel him to share nondisclosure agreements.
Allies of a former House Democrat face DOJ criminal charges after the House unanimously held them in contempt of Congress over defied subpoenas.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who has been a key figure in a push to release files linked to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in the last few years, read off over a dozen names of what he said were “Epstein coconspirators” on Monday…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.