Victims of sexual abuse with NDAs would be able to speak freely under new bill from GOP committee leader

By Jake Tapper, Dugald McConnell, CNN

(CNN) — Survivors of sexual abuse would be free to speak about their experiences even if they sign a nondisclosure agreement under a new bill put forward by the House Republican leading the Jeffrey Epstein investigation in Congress.

Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said the push to protect survivors’ rights arose in part from incidents involving nondisclosure agreements, or NDAs, during the probe — and vowed that the bill would help protect survivors and hold abusers accountable.

“What we’ve learned during this investigation is there were a lot of rules that prevented victims of sexual abuse from coming forward,” he said on “The Lead.” “One of those would be if you signed a nondisclosure agreement. So we filed legislation to allow survivors of sexual abuse to be able to come forward.”

“We don’t want a piece of paper to prevent any bad person from getting away with any type of crimes,” the Kentucky Republican said.

The bill would make any clause of an NDA void and unenforceable if it would prevent any individual, including victims, from providing information about sexual abuse — and would apply to existing agreements.

It’s not yet clear what fate the bill will face in the House, but there is widespread bipartisan support for accountability measures in response to what investigators have learned during the Epstein probe, though there are very different ideas on how to achieve that aim.

The proposal comes amid a standoff between House investigators and one of the witnesses in the Epstein probe, billionaire investor Leon Black, who refused to appear before the committee on September 3. Instead, he sued the panel to try to block it from obtaining his testimony and NDAs. Black’s attorneys have argued that the NDAs the panel was seeking were too broad, had no connection to Epstein and disregarded the privacy interests of third parties.

The House Oversight Committee moved unanimously Tuesday to hold Black in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over the NDAs and to appear for a deposition. Black denies any wrongdoing or abuse related to Epstein.

“He was issued a lawful subpoena, and he didn’t show. So we have a lot of questions for him,” Comer said Tuesday.

Black is one of many influential and wealthy individuals whose past relationships with Epstein have come under further scrutiny since the Justice Department’s release of millions of Epstein files. In a voluntary closed-door June interview, Black told members of Congress that he did not know the extent of Epstein’s crimes — and that he himself never abused women or had sexual relations with minors.

The new bill would also define grooming in federal law for the first time and establishes a requirement to report grooming of a minor to law enforcement.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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