The Department of Justice (DOJ) under Attorney General Pam Bondi announced last month that it would not release any more information from its investigation into the late financier and convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.
The decision has sparked strong criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump’s MAGA supporters and members of Congress who want the records made public.
Highlights
- Senator Ron Wyden revealed Treasury holds thousands of suspicious activity reports showing $1.5 billion in Epstein-linked transactions.
- Major banks filed SARs covering huge Epstein payments, including $1.1 billion flagged by JPMorgan Chase linked to Eastern European women.
- Epstein's financial activities remain largely uninvestigated; efforts to release records face political hurdles despite public and congressional pressure.
But those DOJ files are only part of the story, and they could be less important than a separate batch of documents that Bondi has no control of.
Sen. Ron Wyden has revealed there is a separate trove of Epstein files
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Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who serves as a ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, said a separate set of records about Epstein exists inside the Treasury Department.
These documents consist of thousands of records of hundreds of millions of dollars funneled to Epstein and suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed by banks. SARs are documents banks must submit to the government when they detect unusual or potentially illegal transactions.
According to Wyden, Treasury officials allowed his staff to review, but not copy, more than 4,725 wire transfers connected to Epstein, which could be related to his underage sex trafficking operation and even other illegal dealings.
“It is unthinkable that transactions amounting to tens of millions of dollars paid to a known criminal for the purpose of helping a mega-wealthy individual dodge billions in taxes were never audited or investigated,” Wyden said in a letter to the IRS commissioner, HuffPost quoted.
“When Americans think the system is rigged, this is the kind of abuse they think about,” he added.
Wyden has called for these documents to be turned over to Congress so that lawmakers can investigate further.
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“There has been a concerted effort by the Trump administration to play down that these important records that we have worked with for more than three years are at the Treasury Department,” Wyden told HuffPost.
Wyden’s office also reported that four major banks—JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, and the Bank of New York Mellon—filed suspicious activity reports covering more than $1.5 billion in transactions linked to Epstein.
These flagged transfers included individual transactions of up to $100 million, and payments to women from countries such as Belarus and Russia, according to The New York Times.
The single largest SAR came from JPMorgan Chase, which in late 2019 flagged thousands of wire transfers totaling about $1.1 billion from an Epstein-linked account dating back to 2003.
This report alone included payments to women from Belarus, Russia, and Turkmenistan, reflecting a pattern consistent with the accounts of many of Epstein’s young victims, who were recruited from Eastern Europe.
The records show thousands of transfers that could be connected to illegal activity
Deutsche Bank flagged about $400 million, and the Bank of New York Mellon reported around $378 million in suspicious activity. Bank of America focused on payments from billionaire investor Leon Black to Epstein.
Black reportedly paid Epstein about $158 million for tax and estate planning services. Black’s lawyers say those payments were legal and saved him billions in taxes.
According to an independent review done by an outside law firm for Black four years ago, “[Black] had no awareness of Epstein’s criminal activity and all of the fees paid were for legitimate tax, estate and philanthropy planning services and were vetted and approved by outside law firms.”
In addition to his role as a financier, multiple investigative accounts have alleged that Epstein also had ties to Israeli intelligence services. Former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe alleged that Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell ran a “honey trap” operation on behalf of Mossad, using underage girls to blackmail powerful political and business leaders.
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Epstein started his career as a math teacher without a degree and ended up owning a $77 million mansion in Manhattan, his own island, a ranch in New Mexico, houses across the world, and planes that ferried influential figures and underage girls, with the sources of this wealth remaining a mystery.
Many wealthy associates of Epstein’s have claimed in public statements that they were unaware of the scope of his crimes until his 2019 arrest.
Whether timely SARs would have changed law enforcement’s handling of his case remains uncertain.
But Wyden emphasized that the banking reporting system needs reform, particularly when it comes to oversight of high-net-worth banking clients.
“When banks are only filing these reports after crooks like Epstein are dead or behind bars, that does not do anyone any good,” he told The New York Times.
The Treasury Department previously dismissed Wyden’s investigation as “pathetic political theater and a complete joke.”
But Wyden insists that “following the money” is key to uncovering how Epstein’s network operated.
“This horrific sex-trafficking operation cost Epstein a lot of money, and he had to get that money from somewhere,” Wyden said.
The DOJ’s decision not to release more files on Epstein has fueled anger among Trump’s allies. Last week, the DOJ met with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s convicted accomplice, for nine hours over two days to question her about Epstein and roughly 100 other people.
Many believed that once Trump returned to office, his administration would make public the so-called ‘Epstein client list,’ alleged evidence linking high-profile individuals to the disgraced financier.
Pam Bondi announced that the DOJ will not release any more files related to Epstein
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Instead, Bondi said the department’s review found no such evidence worth releasing.
Some House Republicans are now pushing for legislation to force the DOJ to release all Epstein-related records.
Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, is leading a bipartisan effort to do just that. Speaker Mike Johnson has also called for more transparency, although last week he announced an early adjournment of the House, stalling efforts to release more Epstein information.
Congress has also subpoenaed Maxwell to testify about the Epstein files, but she reportedly hasn’t decided whether to testify or plead the Fifth.
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Reports have also surfaced that Trump’s name appears in unreleased DOJ documents, though it is unclear to what extent.
Trump said this week that his friendship with Epstein ended after Epstein “stole” staff from his Mar-a-Lago Club spa.
However, records indicate that Epstein remained on Mar-a-Lago’s membership list until at least 2007, more than a year after his first arrest on charges of soliciting prostitution from a minor.
Epstein’s 2019 death in a federal jail, ruled a suicide, continues to fuel conspiracy theories that he was killed to protect powerful figures.
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Marijke Chartouni, who says Epstein abused her when she was 20, told reporters: “Sadly, all this noise around the purported ‘Epstein files’ serves only to detract from holding the Justice Department accountable to victims for its failure in preventing this trafficking atrocity.”
Wyden says his review of Treasury records is far from over. He has also asked the IRS for details on any audits or investigations into Epstein’s financial activities between 2012 and 2017.