watch nowFormer Apollo Global Management CEO Leon Black refused to answer questions about non-disclosure agreements that he is party to during testimony about his dealings with Jeffrey Epstein before a House committee on Friday, the panel's Republican chairman said.The chairman, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, said he had issued two subpoenas to Black, "one for all the NDAs that he is party to, and second for a deposition on July 16.""This is a result of refusing to answer specific questions about the ... NDAs, and the terms we believe that information is vital to our investigation," Comer told reporters after the hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee."I will remind everyone that Mr. Black came in voluntarily, but they are refusing to disclose that, so I have issued the subpoena, and we are handing it to him as we speak," Comer said.Black's lawyer, Susan Estrich, in her own comments to reporters, called the issuance of the subpoenas "a premeditated political decision.""I want to be clear, as Mr. Black said .... He never abused a woman, never was with an underage woman, he never engaged in sex traffic, he never paid Epstein for access to women, he was never blackmailed by Epstein," Estrich said. "Mr. Black had no knowledge of any of Mr. Epstein's heinous conduct." Black, in his prepared opening statement, said the notorious sex offender Epstein duped him out of more than $60 million in financial advisory fees by falsely claiming that they were tax-deductible.Black says he had no involvement in Epstein's sex-trafficking operation and did not pay him for access to women.He said he was misled by Epstein's Jekyll-and-Hyde personality, according to a prepared opening statement, which was shared with CNBC.Former CEO of Apollo Global Management Leon Black arrives to testify at a closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill on June 26, 2026 in Washington, DC.Kevin Dietsch | Getty ImagesThe House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been investigating Epstein's ties to many wealthy and influential individuals.Comer earlier told reporters that Black's interview "has the potential to be the most groundbreaking of all depositions.""Pretty significant," Comer said. In his prepared statement, Black said, "I come here today voluntarily to set the record straight about my relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and, in particular, why I paid him the money I did.""Let me state unequivocally that I have never abused a woman," Black said."I have never been with an underage woman. I have never engaged in sex trafficking. I have never paid Epstein for access to women," he said. "I was never blackmailed by Epstein. I was not involved with, and had no knowledge of, any of Epstein's heinous conduct.""I knew Jekyll. I didn't know Hyde," Black said.In his statement, Black leaned on the 2021 findings in the so-called Dechert report, named after the law firm that was retained to examine how much he had paid Epstein for financial advice, the work Epstein did, and whether he knew about Epstein's conduct before his 2019 arrest on federal child sex trafficking charges."The Dechert report concluded that I had paid Epstein $158 million," Black said, according to the prepared remarks."And Dechert examined the services Epstein rendered and determined that Epstein performed highly valuable and legitimate tax and estate planning services for my family office; that the tax work was responsible for billions of dollars in savings, and that all of Epstein's work had been vetted by reputable law and accounting firms."Black said Epstein had told him the fees he was paying him "were tax-deductible, '60-cent dollars', which I only learned years later was not true.""I.e. what I believed to be $95 million of net fees paid to him over five years was actually $158 million," Black said. "But, at the time I was led to believe by Epstein that I was paying '60 cent dollars.' That assurance was false."Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the committee's ranking Democrat, told reporters that what Black paid Epstein is "an enormous amount of money, and Jeffrey Epstein would not have been able to commit horrific crimes without the support of Mr. Black."Black said he met Epstein in the mid-1990s when Epstein was on the board of Rockefeller University."His network included respected luminaries such as David Rockefeller; Ehud Barak, Larry Summers; George Mitchell, Bill Richardson, and Ace Greenberg," Black said.He said he knew Epstein for 18 years "before I paid him a dime."Black said he began paying Epstein in 2013 for "his bona fide advice" on tax, insurance, and trusts and estates matters, subjects that he said Epstein possessed "remarkable acumen" about."With the benefit of hindsight, I now know, as does the world, that Epstein was engaged in horrific, sordid activities," Black said. "I feel terrible for Epstein's victims."— CNBC's Irit Skulnik contributed to this article