Sen. Ron Wyden Is Following The Money In The Epstein Case

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This is getting good! Senator Ron Wyden, top Democrat on the powerful Senate Finance Committee, has been digging into Jeffrey Epstein’s financial network for the past three years. Some members of his staff have viewed confidential files that shed light on the immense sums of money that, they say, Epstein moved through the banking system to fuel his vast sex-trafficking network. Via the New York Times:

In particular, filings by four big banks flagged more than $1.5 billion in transactions — including thousands of wire transfers for the purchase and sale of artwork for rich friends, fees paid to Mr. Epstein by wealthy individuals, and payments to numerous women, the senator’s office found. The filings came after Mr. Epstein was arrested in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges.

Large money transfers to individuals, foreign countries or obscure companies are the kind of things banks are supposed to be examining as potentially suspicious. Some of the Epstein money transfers disclosed in a report from JPMorgan Chase involved accounts at two Russian banks before those institutions were subject to U.S. sanctions. A few transactions red-flagged were for as much as $100 million.

[…] “We felt from the beginning this was a follow-the-money case,” Mr. Wyden said in an interview. “This horrific sex-trafficking operation cost Epstein a lot of money, and he had to get that money from somewhere.”

The bank records reviewed by Mr. Wyden’s staff — called suspicious activity reports or SARs — are meant to be an early warning system for law enforcement about signs of illegal activity. As dictated by federal law, the reports are so confidential that banks can’t even acknowledge filing them, and people who have seen the documents are under great constraint as to what they can say about them.

Notice that the Times has no reaction to the idea that the president gets to decide what the Attorney General is allowed to do:

Mr. Trump, who was once friendly with Mr. Epstein, said this week that he would let Ms. Bondi decide which documents should be made public. He also dismissed his supporters who are calling for the release of Epstein-related files and said the matter was old news.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. Ms. Bondi has said she stands behind the department’s memo that said “no further disclosure” of information was warranted.