Transcription
This is Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman.
The House Oversight Committee has released more documents from the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's estate, including a birthday book given to him by friends. The book includes a sexually suggestive note and sketch of a naked woman that appears to be signed by Donald Trump. In the text, Trump says, "We have certain things in common, Jeffrey." It concludes with Trump writing, "A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret."
The White House has denied the letter was created by Trump, but the New York Times has revealed Trump's signature is very similar to his signature on other documents from that period, a simple Donald. A second page of the birthday book featured an image of Epstein holding a large check. Democratic lawmakers said the photo showed Epstein and a longtime Mara Lago member joking about selling a quote "fully depreciated" quote unquote woman to Donald Trump for $22,500.
As pressure grows on the Trump administration to release the full Epstein files, we turn to look at how the country's largest bank, JP Morgan, enabled Epstein's sex trafficking operation and profited from its ties to Jeffrey Epstein. On Monday, the New York Times published a major expose on JP Morgan's ties to Epstein. It's based on more than 13,000 pages of legal and financial records. According to the Times, JP Morgan processed more than 4,700 transactions totaling more than $1.1 billion for Epstein, including payments to some of the women who are sexually trafficked.
We're joined now by David Enrich, deputy investigations editor for the New York Times. He co-wrote the piece headlined, "How JP Morgan Enabled the Crimes of Jeffrey Epstein." David, welcome back to Democracy Now. Why don't you start with that headline? How did JP Morgan enable the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein?
>> Well, for many years, JP Morgan was basically the primary bank serving Epstein. And in the course of the 15 years that it worked with him, it did a number of things. First and foremost, it set up accounts for not only him and his companies, but also quite a few of his victims who had been trafficked into the United States. And it arranged for Epstein to be able to pay those victims both in the U.S. and in Eastern European countries and in Russia. The bank lent him money that was associated for projects associated with sex trafficking. It, in some cases, just paid him cash, millions of dollars of it over the years, to thank him for some of the services he had provided the bank. And over and over again, when people within the bank raised red flags about how much cash Epstein was withdrawing and some of the suspicious wire transfers he was doing, people higher up at the bank essentially looked the other way because they wanted to keep this guy as a lucrative client. And so, basically, Epstein's sex trafficking operation, we now know, operated in large part because he had unfettered access to the global financial system, and for many years, it was JP Morgan that was providing him with that access.
>> Take us through the timeline. And David Enrich, what about other banks? Did Jeffrey Epstein try to bank with other banks? I mean, this perhaps the most prestigious, the largest bank in the United States, but wasn't he turned away by bank after bank?
>> Well, there's some question about who turned him away and when. And certainly, we know that in 2013, after JP Morgan, after years of internal pressure, finally parted ways with him, he went right on to another bank, the German lender Deutsche Bank, which is, you may recall, the bank that was willing to do business with Donald Trump, among others. But the history with JP Morgan and Jeffrey Epstein starts in the late 1990s. And Epstein at the time was a very wealthy but kind of mysterious guy. The bank itself, in documents that we've reviewed, didn't have a whole lot of information on where his money was coming from, who he was working for, or why he was important. All they knew is that he was parking a ton of money at the bank and generating millions of dollars a year in fees. And over the ensuing years, Epstein's role inside the bank became more and more important. And it involved not just doing business that made money for the bank, but that he introduced the bank to a lot of potential clients, to government leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu, and advised them on strategic initiatives and provided them kind of with troubleshooting advice along the way. So, he was a really indispensable part of the bank and an indispensable partner, I think, to some of the bank's very highest-ranking executives.
>> Now, if you could talk about the significance of this. In fact, it was two Israeli prime ministers, Benjamin Netanyahu, that he brought to the bank, as well as Ehud Barak.
>> Yeah. So, he, and this was, there's a laundry list of rich, powerful, famous people that Epstein counted among his acquaintances, and he was extremely adept at using those connections to ingratiate himself with lots of other people and institutions. JP Morgan was very eager to do business with him and to accept the introductions he was offering. And the relationship that Epstein had with JP Morgan was really important to Epstein because it hooked him into the global financial system and provided him with money. But I think to an equal degree, it also imbued him with legitimacy and credibility that was really important to him, especially after he was first in 2006 indicted and arrested on sex trafficking-related charges, and then in 2008 pleaded guilty and was then incarcerated on similar charges. And all the while, JP Morgan continued to bank him, and for years afterwards as well. And that was even though people within the bank, including at a pretty senior level, were aware that what Epstein had been accused of, what he had pleaded guilty to, and were concerned that there was a lot more going on here that hadn't even become public. And yet, they decided institutionally that the right thing to do was to continue working with him, primarily because he was making them a ton of money. He also brought to the bank Sergey Brin, right, the founder of Google, who banked with them to the tune of something like $4 billion.
>> Yeah. And there again, there's a long list of people that he made introductions to. And I think, and the bank would say that, you know, they are one of the biggest, most prestigious banks in the world, and they don't have any trouble finding clients on their own or talking to government leaders on their own. There is no dispute that Epstein, at least with one of the very highest-ranking executives of the bank, was someone who the bank was turning to over and over again for advice, for counseling, for introductions, and most of all, for financial services. And so, this is a long, symbiotic relationship. And I think that the fact that this full story hasn't been told until now is really emblematic in some ways of how many mysteries continue to swirl around Jeffrey Epstein and his money, and how much more digging there is to do by everyone from journalists to congressional investigators who are, I think, belatedly getting really serious about this.
>> So, David Enrich, if you can explain, I don't know if everyone knows how banks work. What does it mean when there are red flags? What were those red flags? What was JP Morgan ignoring? When do they have to report to the feds about these red flags? And then we'll talk about Jess Staley and Jamie Diamond.
>> Sure. So, the red flags, there was a range of red flags. The most obvious of them internally at the bank was that Epstein, he had hundreds of millions of dollars parked at the bank, but he was taking out so much money in cash on a regular basis that it was a real warning sign. And banks are kind of trained to be on the lookout for people that are regularly withdrawing huge sums of cash. And by huge sums, I mean, you know, tens of thousands of dollars virtually every month. And it drew attention within the bank. And yet, when it got escalated to higher-ups, people looked the other way. And the reason it draws attention is that cash is a common currency for criminals. And sure enough, what we now know is that virtually like almost identical amounts of Epstein was taking out amounts of money that were almost identical to what we now know he was paying to young women and girls as part of his sex trafficking operation. Another big red flag was that he was wiring money, there were patterns of him wiring money to all over the world, including to banks and individuals in Eastern Europe and Russia, that we now know, in fact, we knew to some degree at the time as well, that this was part of what appeared to be a sex trafficking operation. And these are things that anti-money laundering experts and compliance officials within JP Morgan and within the banking industry in general, these are pretty clear, well-established red flags for possible criminal behavior. And sure enough, the bank's teams of anti-money laundering experts and compliance officials recognized this more or less in real time, and in some cases reported it to the government, but did not take it seriously internally. And, you know, they had discussions about, "These are suspicious things that are happening. We don't know exactly what he's using this money for, but these are red flags." And in many cases, with other bank customers, we can see that when a bank customer gets accused of wrongdoing or is engaged in potentially suspicious transactions, the banks like JP Morgan will very quickly get rid of them as clients because it is not worth taking the legal or reputational risk to keep doing business with them. And again, that did not happen in JP Morgan's case. And this is not just like one isolated incident. This was happening over and over again over a period of many years where people inside the bank repeatedly rang the alarm bells and then were just overridden by people higher up the food chain.
>> Compare what happened to Jeffrey Epstein to Wesley Snipes.
>> Yeah. So, Wesley Snipes, the actor, was another JP Morgan client in 2006. And he was accused of tax fraud by the federal government, and almost instantaneously, the bank, and he had not been convicted of those charges, he had not admitted to those charges, almost instantly the bank kicked him out as a client. And this was almost exactly the same time that Epstein was initially indicted and arrested for alleged sex crimes, which is arguably more serious than a tax fraud allegation. And instead of swiftly kicking Epstein out of the bank the way they had done with Wesley Snipes, they had a fairly robust internal discussion that culminated in the bank deciding to keep him as a client with basically no strings attached.
>> We're talking to David Enrich, deputy investigations editor for the New York Times. The major new expose he co-authored, headlined "How JP Morgan Enabled the Crimes of Jeffrey Epstein." A Times investigation found America's leading bank spent years supporting and profiting from the notorious sex offender, ignoring red flags, suspicious activity, and concerned executives. Which takes us to the higher-ups. Um, if we can, if you can tell us about Jess Staley, once the leading contender to succeed Jamie Diamond as chief executive of JP Morgan, how he had an ongoing relationship with Jeffrey Epstein at the bank, outside the bank, would later become head of Barclays in Britain, and just take us through that relationship and then his relationship and what he discussed with Jamie Diamond.
>> Yeah. And so the relationship between Jess Staley and Jeffrey Epstein was long and multifaceted and quite intimate, I think. And Staley had, was a basically a lifetime JP Morgan employee until 2013. And he was the person who, back in the late '90s, early 2000s, developed a very close relationship with Epstein, who at the time was this kind of up-and-coming client at the bank. And the relationship started off, I think, just purely in financial terms. Staley was trying to get to know Epstein because he was an important client of the bank and could make important introductions to other potential clients for the bank. But over the years, it evolved into something much more than a traditional client relationship, I would say. And Staley became, I think, a close friend of Epstein. When Epstein was incarcerated in Florida in 2008 and 2009, Staley went to visit him. Staley also visited a number of Epstein's properties, including when Epstein was not even there. And on at least one occasion, we know that Staley ended up having sex with a young woman whom he had met at Epstein's townhouse and who later alleged that Epstein had basically sex trafficked her. And all the while, inside JP Morgan, when these concerns would arise about whether Jeffrey Epstein is involved in crimes and whether the bank is involved in facilitating or enabling those crimes, over and over, we see Jess Staley, in some cases joined with other executives, but always Jess Staley going to bat for Epstein, trying to kind of dampen down these internal concerns and to insist that this is someone the bank needed to continue doing business with. And he went to bat for Epstein over and over again. And it ranged from kind of interacting with low-level compliance officers to really senior people within the bank, like the general counsel of the bank, who had grave concerns about Epstein and was persuaded ultimately to not really take a stand and insist that he be fired from the bank. And I mean, I think one of the ongoing mysteries here is where JP Morgan's CEO, Jamie Diamond, was in all of this. And Diamond is, he's been CEO for a long time. He is someone who likes to boast about his attention to detail. He is known as a bit of a micromanager and who is really on his subordinates trying to know everything that's going on. And in this case, Diamond claims that he simply, he knew nothing about Epstein. He didn't even realize Epstein was a client, he says, until after Epstein was arrested and jailed in 2019. And, you know, that is, first of all, a little bit hard to square with Diamond's repeated insistences that he knows everything that's going on inside the bank, but also with the fact that Jess Staley, under oath, has said that Diamond, that he talked to Diamond on a number of occasions about Epstein's status as a client. And we also reviewed internal emails from the bank that appear to show with other employees of the bank mentioning the fact that Jamie Diamond is going to be involved in some of the decision-making around whether to keep Epstein as a client. And I don't know what the truth is here, but there seems like there's kind of a binary choice. Either Jamie Diamond knew about Jeffrey Epstein as a client and has been lying about that under oath and in other forms, or Jamie Diamond didn't know Jeffrey Epstein was a client and somehow was out of the loop on this really important client and on an issue that was really sowing great divisions among some of his top lieutenants at the bank. And, you know, we talked to David Boies, the lawyer who has sued JP Morgan, among others, for its role in the Epstein saga, and he described both of those options. He said that neither of those options is good from Diamond's standpoint, and, you know, I'm inclined to agree with that analysis.
>> And what happened to Staley? He went on to head Barclays. And what happened there in Britain?
>> Yeah. So, he, after leaving JP Morgan, he became the CEO of Barclays, and he lasted in that role for several years until Jeffrey Epstein was arrested and charged and then committed suicide in jail. And a lot of questions began to emerge about what Staley had done for Epstein, both at JP Morgan and at Barclays. And an investigation later determined that Staley had been really dishonest with Barclays about the nature and duration of his relationship with Epstein. And so, he was fired by the bank and later banned by British regulators from having a senior role in the U.K. financial services industry. So, and I think his career is pretty well done at this point. Um, but, you know, aside from losing his job, I my understanding is that he walked away with a huge fortune that he derived in part over the years because he was proving such an effective advocate and such an effective manager of the Epstein relationship at JP Morgan.
>> The fallout of JP Morgan, you write in the New York Times, has been limited. In 2023, it paid $290 million to settle a lawsuit brought by roughly 200 of Epstein's victims, and an additional $75 million to resolve related litigation brought by the U.S. Virgin Islands, where many of Epstein's crimes took place, right? He owned two islands in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
>> Yeah, that's right. And that sounds like a lot of money. It is a lot of money in normal terms, until you realize how much money JP Morgan earns. And in 2023, the year that they paid this roughly $300 million in settlement, they made profits of $50 billion with a B. So, and the payments they made to settle these lawsuits amounted to less than 1% of their profits that year. And so, I think one of the things that we, my colleagues and I, have heard over and over as we've been reporting this story is that punishments like this do not, or they are unlikely to have a major deterrent effect. And what is really to stop a scandal like this from happening in the future? And I don't know what the answer to that is, but certainly having to pay less than 1% of your annual profits as a penalty does not seem likely to have a huge impact on the behavior of bankers or corporate executives in the future.
>> And let me ask you this latest news headline, and you may not be able to respond. The request by the Justice Department to a federal judge to reject NBC News' request to unseal the names of two Epstein associates who both received wire payments of something like $200,000 from Epstein back in 2018 as part of his non-prosecution plea deal with federal prosecutors in Florida. Epstein helped ensure that his associates would not be prosecuted. Have you reported on this or can you comment?
>> Yeah, I mean, I've done some reporting on it. And again, there are a lot of unanswered questions here. We do not know the associates to whom Epstein was paying these six-figure sums in 2018. We do know, and he had left JP Morgan at that point and had become a customer of Deutsche Bank by then. So this is not, as far as I know, a JP Morgan issue. And I have no idea who those associates were. I mean, they could be his lawyers. They could be the beneficiaries of his will. It could be women who he sex trafficked. All I know looking at this is that it is remarkable to me that the Trump administration, after rising to power in part based on its assurances that it would do everything in its power to provide transparency about the Epstein investigations, is again doing the exact opposite of that and fighting to keep stuff secret. And again, I don't know, maybe there is a good explanation for why in these particular cases they are trying to keep this secret, but certainly it appears to be part of a pattern in which Trump and his allies are doing everything in their power to keep this stuff hidden from public view.
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