WASHINGTON — The US House of Representatives voted to hold Leon Black in contempt of Congress on Wednesday after the ex-hedge fund manager and associate of Jeffrey Epstein ignored subpoenas for further testimony and information. The House passed the contempt resolution by unanimous consent after it had advanced out of the Oversight…
Page A2From§Eachthe late evening edition — 16 September 2026
Leon Black sues to dodge Epstein subpoena, held in contempt months later for dodging it
As it ran on the front
The subpoena went out in June, after Leon Black stood up in the middle of a voluntary appearance before the House Oversight Committee and walked out before it was over. That is the first clause of the document, and it is worth reading slowly, because everything that follows is Mr. Black's answer to being asked to finish what he started.
All together now — line one: a subpoena, for testimony and for the nondisclosure agreements he had signed. Mr. Black did not answer it. He sued the House Oversight Committee instead, in September, calling the subpoena "invalid" and the inquiry into his ties to Jeffrey Epstein one that "bears no legitimate connection" to anything the committee could reasonably want to know. Mr. Black co-founded Apollo Global Management, the private equity firm he built into one of the largest in the world, and for years he paid Jeffrey Epstein to serve as his own wealth adviser — the lawsuit was an attempt to keep the House from asking what that arrangement bought him. Five wire services filed the story the same day, September 3rd, which is the tell: a document built for a news cycle, not for a docket.…
…(cont) The lawsuit lost. The deposition never happened anyway.
Line two, same reader, same page: the Oversight Committee advanced a contempt resolution, and on Wednesday the full House passed it — by unanimous consent. Read that clause again. Unanimous consent is not a party dividing over Jeffrey Epstein; it is a chamber agreeing, with no objection from anyone in the room, that a 75-year-old billionaire who sued the United States government to avoid testifying is now on the record for refusing to testify. That is the exact outcome his own lawsuit asked a judge to prevent. He got it anyway — later, and with the House's name on the paperwork instead of a court's.
Nothing in the document explains why he left the room in June. It records only that he left, sued to avoid coming back, lost, and did not come back. The subpoena is still open. So, evidently, is the file on what Jeffrey Epstein was being paid to advise him about.
“He had lawyers good enough to sue the United States House of Representatives, and he still couldn't manage to answer a question. That's not access to the courts, that's a stalling fee — you spend three months and a filing to buy the one thing money's supposed to buy, which is time, and it still runs out. A contempt vote with no fine and no marshal is what it costs a billionaire to make Congress wait; the rest of us get a bench warrant for skipping jury duty.”
“He had a legitimate legal question about the scope of that subpoena — challenging a committee's authority isn't obstruction, it's called due process. Did I say "legitimate"? The lawsuit lost and he still didn't sit for the deposition. Look, unanimous consent just means nobody wanted that particular fight on camera, it's not exactly a verdict on anything.”
The receipts
The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a motion to hold business magnate Leon Black in contempt of Congress after he declined to comply with subpoenas related to Jeffrey Epstein issued by one of the lower chamber’s most powerful committees. As the co-founder of Apollo Global Management, Black paid Epstein to be his wealth…
· Billionaire Leon Black sues House Oversight Committee over Epstein probe from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
· Leon Black lawsuit delivers setback to House oversight committee’s Epstein investigation from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
· Billionaire Leon Black challenges House subpoena for Epstein testimony from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
· Leon Black sues House Oversight Committee over subpoena in Epstein probe from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
· Billionaire Leon Black sues House Oversight Committee amid NDA fight in Jeffrey Epstein probe from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.