Sen. Ron Wyden has spent the past three years investigating the financial machinery behind Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.
The Oregon Democrat, who is the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, says that he has been pushing the Justice Department to uncover the full extent of Epstein’s money movements and the banks that enabled them.
“We felt from the beginning this was a follow-the-money case,” Wyden said in an interview with the New York Times. “This horrific sex-trafficking operation cost Epstein a lot of money, and he had to get that money from somewhere.”
President Donald Trump has been urging his supporters to move on from the story. However, he has said he would let Attorney General Pam Bondi decide which documents related to the case are “credible” and should be made available to the public.
Wyden’s staff has reviewed thousands of pages of highly confidential bank filings, known as Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), documenting more than $1.5 billion in flagged transactions connected to Epstein. The reports from JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America and Bank of New York Mellon reveal a dizzying flow of money: payments to women in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, fees from wealthy clients and transactions through Russian banks that the U.S. eventually sanctioned. Some individual transactions reached as high as $100 million.
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Wyden said his investigation has taken on greater urgency as the Justice Department has declined to release the FBI’s records or make the bank filings fully available to Congress. While some Republicans have called for more transparency on the so-called “Epstein Files,” Trump has dismissed the matter as irrelevant and part of a Democratic Party “hoax.” Congressional Republicans followed suit and blocked recent efforts to force the DOJ’s hand.
Wyden believes the story is far from over, and that reforms to bank reporting are needed.
“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 Times.
The Justice Department and most of the banks named in the report have declined to comment. Deutsche Bank said that it “regrets our historical connection with Jeffrey Epstein.” JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank have paid $290 million and $75 million, respectively, to settle lawsuits alleging they ignored clear warning signs about Epstein.
