The chair of a congressional committee trying to pry non-disclosure agreements from billionaire Leon Black for its Jeffrey Epstein investigation proposed a bill on Wednesday that would allow victims of sexual abuse to break NDAs.
Rep. James Comer announced the bill a day after the House Oversight Committee unanimously voted for a resolution to hold Black, the Epstein associate and former CEO of Apollo Global Management, in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena requiring him to hand over all of his NDAs, and any in his possession that reference Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell.
“During our investigation, we’ve learned how powerful men weaponized nondisclosure agreements to silence survivors of sexual abuse,” Comer, a Kentucky Republican, said in a statement Wednesday. The proposed bill would ensure that sexual-abuse survivors and other people with information about such abuse could speak freely about it, he said.
Business Insider reported earlier this year that some of Epstein’s accusers have signed confidential settlements with friends of Epstein whom they have also accused of misconduct, according to three people with direct knowledge of such settlements. The settlements include NDAs, the people said. One person told Business Insider they had direct knowledge of settlements with four of Epstein’s friends who were accused of sexual misconduct by more than 20 women between them.
The House Oversight Committee in June issued two subpoenas to Black when he refused to answer questions about NDAs in a closed-door interview about his interactions with Epstein. Black, who gave over $150 million to Epstein for what he said were financial services, walked out of that voluntary interview.
This month, Black sued the committee rather than comply with the subpoenas. One subpoena demanded NDAs; the other required him to testify under oath in a deposition.
Epstein died in 2019 while awaiting trial for federal sex-trafficking charges. Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison after a Manhattan jury found her guilty in 2021 of trafficking girls to Epstein for sex.
Black has said he wasn’t aware of Epstein’s sexual abuse of women. His lawsuit says the committee didn’t have a “valid legislative purpose” for “such a sweeping and intrusive subpoena served upon a private citizen.”
If passed into law, the proposed bill, called the Survivor’s Voice Protection Act, would void nondisclosure clauses if they prohibit victims of sexual abuse from disclosing those experiences, or if they bar any other person from disclosing facts related to such abuse. The law would also create a fiduciary duty to inform law enforcement about suspected sexual grooming of minors.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have not yet said whether they would support the law.
The House of Representatives hasn’t scheduled a vote on whether to hold Black in contempt of Congress. Black’s lawyers called the Oversight committee’s resolution “a complete abomination.”
“This is retaliation — plain and simple,” attorneys Susan Estrich and Aaron Cutler said in a statement. They said the subpoenas were “illegitimate, illegal, and a textbook abuse of power designed to bully and destroy legal protections of private citizens.”
People with non-disclosure agreements can be legally compelled to speak about their experiences with a subpoena, but not in a voluntary interview with Congress. Some of Epstein’s other associates, including Bill Gates, said in voluntary interviews that they didn’t sign any non-disclosure agreements with Epstein or Maxwell victims.
Many states banned NDAs related to sexual abuse during the #MeToo movement following reporting about Harvey Weinstein, but no such ban exists on a federal level.
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