The Billionaires in the Epstein Files and Their Ties to Israel
Image by Kelly Sikkema.
On July 7, the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI released a joint, unsigned memorandum that began with these words: “As part of our commitment to transparency….” The two-page memorandum reveals that these federal agencies had searched everything from databases to hard drives to locked cabinets and closets for documents pertaining to the international sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, the college dropout who had amassed a $577.7 million fortune at the time of his death, according to probate documents in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The statement from the DOJ/FBI said its extensive searches had turned up 300 gigabytes of Epstein-related data. (For an idea of how much that might translate into if converted into Microsoft Word documents, it comes out to approximately 19.5 million pages or 65,000 pages per gigabyte according to tech experts.)
But despite that opening promise of “transparency,” the memorandum meanders its way to a very Trumpian finish. Not one word of the 300 gigabytes of Epstein data in the hands of the government would be released to the public. That’s because the President’s Praetorian Guard, populated by his own former defense attorneys, have determined that there was no “incriminating ‘client list’ ”; “no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals” and not a scintilla of “evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
The intellectually insulting memo landed like a hot fireball among Trump’s MAGA base. Trump had promised for years to expose all the elite pedophiles controlling the Deep State if he was returned to the Oval Office. The outrage was immediate on rightwing podcasts and social media.
The fallout has spiraled nonstop for the past month on evening news programs. Unfortunately, corporate media can’t seem to even whisper the name of the most obvious third-party target for a DOJ criminal charge: the largest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase, with a storied history of money laundering; five previous DOJ felony counts; and client relationships with Epstein’s two major money men – billionaires Leslie Wexner and Leon Black – both of whom have ties to Israel, as did Epstein.
According to court records, JPMorgan Chase sat at the very center of the financial side of this sex trafficking network and has an existing spreadsheet showing it processed 9,000 transactions payable to Epstein-related persons that occurred between 2005 and 2019 with a combined value of over $2.4 billion.
The hard evidence against JPMorgan Chase for both “facilitating” and “participating in” Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation consumes one million pages and 82,000 documents in court files in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in lower Manhattan. The documents were filed in connection with two separate federal lawsuits against JPMorgan Chase that were brought in late 2022 by the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands (where Epstein trafficked underage girls to his rich pals on his own secluded island compound); and a class action lawsuit brought by Epstein’s sexual assault victims.
After extensive discovery and the filing of tens of thousands of pages of redacted or sealed documents and deposition transcripts throughout much of 2023, JPMorgan Chase settled with the victims for $290 million and with the U.S. Virgin Islands for $75 million, rather than face a jury trial.
These federal lawsuits were civil cases, leaving the door wide open for the U.S. Department of Justice to bring criminal charges against JPMorgan Chase – something that, to date, the DOJ has failed to do despite a well-developed roadmap provided by these cases.
Although JPMorgan Chase was legally obligated to file Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) with the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) on a timely basis regarding these highly suspicious money flows to Epstein from some of the wealthiest men in America, the bank did not file SARs until after Epstein died in his jail cell on August 10, 2019, according to the U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General’s office. (The New York City Medical Examiner ruled Epstein’s death a suicide.)
While many of these court documents have been sealed since the moment they were filed with the court in 2023, the public and congressional investigators can download hundreds of lightly-redacted documents, as we did throughout 2023. These documents provide a critical investigative trail that any honest and competent prosecutor can follow to mount a strong case against JPMorgan Chase. In fact, that $365 million in settlement payments by JPMorgan Chase to Epstein’s victims and the U.S. Virgin Islands is a strong indicator that there are far bigger revelations to come.
At a March 13, 2023 court hearing, the Epstein victims’ attorney, David Boies, argued in open court that JPMorgan Chase had used a private jet owned by the bank’s hedge fund, Highbridge Capital, to transport girls for Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. (Epstein had brokered the deal for Highbridge Capital to be sold to JPMorgan in 2004 and received a $15 million fee for his work.)
A January 13, 2023 amended complaint filed by Boies’ law firm, elaborated on the allegation as follows: “Moreover, Highbridge, a wholly-owned subsidiary of JP Morgan, trafficked young women and girls on its own private jet from Florida to Epstein in New York as late as 2012.”
During a burst of document filings with the court in July 2023, we located an expert report written by a former FBI agent of 23 years, Shaun O’Neill, who indicated in writing that JPMorgan Chase had “impeded” the federal criminal investigation of Epstein.
The document had a heading at the top of each page that read: “Highly Confidential – Subject to Protective Order.” However, the notation on the docket was that the document was now being presented as a “redacted” document. We called the court deputy to be certain that the media was allowed to quote from the unredacted parts of the document. We were assured that we could.
A major revelation in the document is that former FBI agent O’Neill had been allowed to read the full deposition given in the case by William Langford, an anti-money-laundering (AML) executive at JPMorgan Chase, who had previously worked for the U.S. Treasury’s FinCEN.
According to O’Neill, Langford indicated in his deposition that Epstein became a JPMorgan client in 1985, not in 1998, the date that most major news media has heretofore reported that the relationship began. JPMorgan has not publicly corrected that information. If Langford is correct, that would mean that JPMorgan Chase has financial transaction files on Epstein dating back 40 years – which would certainly open a window into who provided Epstein’s early seed money and who his largest financial funders were over the decades.
An internal document filed with the court by JPMorgan Chase lists accounts at the bank that have been coded as “Epstein related” as of October 18, 2007. (See data beginning on page 21 of 29.) Those include accounts belonging to Epstein’s clients (despite the DOJ/FBI memo telling the public on July 7 that no such client list exists.) The table also indicates the date that the account was first opened. The earliest account is for the J. Epstein Foundation, which shows that the account was opened on December 31, 1991. Another early Epstein-related account is for the billionaire retailing magnate, Leslie Wexner. It was opened on March 9, 2000. A trust for Wexner’s children, of which Epstein was Trustee, was opened on January 21, 1999.
A significant part of Epstein’s wealth came directly from, or through, Leslie Wexner, including Epstein’s upper East Side mansion in Manhattan; his Boeing 727 jet known as the “Lolita Express”; and an estate in New Albany, Ohio that was adjacent to Wexner’s own luxurious estate there. The value of Epstein’s assets originating from Wexner were estimated at over $100 million at the time of Epstein’s death in 2019.
In a 2016 deposition given under oath by one of Epstein’s former underage sex slaves, Virginia Giuffre (who died by a reported suicide in April of this year) the following exchange occurs between an attorney and Giuffre:
Q. Was Les Wexner one of the powerful business executives that you were trafficked to?
A. Yes.
Q. How many times did you have sex with Les Wexner?
A. Multiple.
Q. What’s the approximate range of number, more than three?
A. More than three.
Q. More than five?
A. Possibly.
Q. More than ten?
A. No.
Q. Did Mr. Wexner ask you to wear any particular clothing during your sexual trafficking? [Back and forth comments between lawyers.]
A. Yes, I wore lingerie for him.
Q. At his request?
A. It wasn’t his request, it was Ghislaine [Maxwell] who set it up for me. [Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence after being convicted by a jury on federal sex trafficking charges related to Epstein’s victims.]
Q. How many times did you and Les Wexner and Sarah Kellen have sex together?
A. Once that I can remember.
Q. Where were you?
A. New Mexico.
Q. Are there other witnesses?
A. Number 48 [name redacted in document] I can’t pronounce her last name.
Q. [Name redacted in document]
A. [Redacted in document] yes.
Q. Anyone else?
A. Number 50, [name redacted in document].
Later in the deposition, the following exchange occurs:
Q. Did you name Les Wexner to the FBI?
A. Yes.
Q. And you said I think he has relevant information, but I don’t think he’ll tell you the truth. Do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. Why did you think he wouldn’t tell the truth?
A. Because he did things that were wrong.
Q. What do you mean by that?
A. He participated in sex with minors.
Q. Did you tell Rebecca [Giuffre’s friend] that Les Wexner had participated in sex with minors?
A. Yes, I did.
Notwithstanding the massive wealth that Wexner transferred to Epstein and Ms. Giuffre’s credible allegations, Wexner’s name appears chiseled into numerous buildings at Ohio State University where he has been a major donor, including its Medical Center and Wexner Center for the Arts.
On July 23, 2023 we filed a request under the Ohio Public Records Act seeking copies of any investigative reports the taxpayer-supported institution of higher education had conducted on Wexner’s relationship with Epstein. After a long period of stalling, no meaningful documents were received by us.
Wexner is the former longtime Chairman and CEO of The Limited (a/k/a L Brands) retailing chain which, at various times, included Abercrombie & Fitch, Victoria’s Secret, Lane Bryant, Bath & Body Works and others. L Brands was a publicly traded company that was required to comply with Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules on the timely disclosure of material facts.
According to the SEC, Form 8K must be filed with the SEC by a publicly traded company to announce major events that shareholders have a right to be informed about. Companies typically have just four days to make the 8K filing after becoming aware of the event.
In 2019, the Board of Directors of L Brands hired the Big Law firm, Davis Polk & Wardwell, to investigate the ties between Epstein and Wexner after their close relationship became public following Epstein’s arrest on federal sex trafficking charges. Wexner’s wife, Abigail, had been a lawyer at Davis Polk prior to her marriage to Wexner and the law firm was the longstanding outside counsel to the company. After a shareholder sued the company over Davis Polk not having adequate impartiality in the matter, L Brands hired a second law firm, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, to conduct a second investigation.
We could find no public release of the findings of either the Davis Polk report or the Wachtell report. That is highly irregular for such a serious matter involving a publicly traded company.
What followed the Davis Polk and Wachtell investigations suggests that there were damaging findings. Wexner announced in 2020 that he would be stepping down as Chairman and CEO of L Brands. In 2021, both Wexner and his wife announced they would not seek reelection to the Board of L Brands. In August of 2021, L Brands ceased to exist with the spinoff of Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works as separate companies.
On August 7, 2023, we filed a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA) with the SEC seeking to learn if L Brands had ever filed the Davis Polk or Wachtell internal investigative reports with the SEC. If it had, that would mean that lawyers for the publicly-traded company had requested and received confidential treatment of those reports at the SEC — since they are not in the SEC’s public database.
On August 23, 2023 we received a letter via email from the SEC advising that nothing would be forthcoming to us in the way of documents under our FOIA request. The SEC based its refusal to provide even a shred of a document on the following:
We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any records responsive to your request. Even to acknowledge the existence of such records could interfere with the personal privacy protections provided by FOIA Exemptions…Under Exemption 6 the release of this type of information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy….
The American people should interpret the SEC response as this: billionaires will be protected even when there is more than two decades of credible evidence of a sex trafficking ring victimizing minors and operating with impunity within the United States.
Epstein functioned as a close confidante to Wexner and held a bizarrely broad power of attorney for Wexner’s financial interests. In addition to having an inordinate amount of power over Wexner’s finances connected to his retailing empire and his charities, Epstein also became a business partner of Leslie Wexner in Wexner’s multi-million-dollar residential/business development project known as the New Albany Company in New Albany, Ohio.
A lawsuit that was later dismissed by the judge alleged that the same members of JPMorgan’s Board of Directors who brought its Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, to power, were also engaged in business with Jeffrey Epstein.
On July 21 of this year, Senator Ron Wyden, the Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to the Justice Department’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi, outlining the need for a broad criminal investigation into the Epstein matter. Of particular note, Wyden wrote:
The Treasury Department’s Epstein file also contains details of hundreds of millions in payments to Epstein from Wall Street financiers, including $170 million Leon Black paid Epstein for purported tax and estate planning advice.
Epstein was not a tax lawyer nor was he a CPA. He was not professionally qualified to render tax advice. Leon Black was the billionaire co-founder of Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm that he previously led as Chairman and CEO for decades. Black was in a position to hire the most qualified and expensive tax attorneys at the myriad Wall Street law firms that surrounded his firm in Manhattan. Instead, the American people are being asked to accept the story that Leon Black paid Epstein $170 million for tax advice. Assuming a high rate of $2700 per hour at a Big Law firm for expert tax planning, Epstein could have purchased 62,963 hours of tax advice for $170 million.
The common threads between Epstein, Wexner and Black (and potentially numerous others) were sexual assault allegations against the men, large sums of money changing hands, and robust support for Israel.
Leon Black has invested millions of dollars since 2017, shining up Israel’s image by publishing books on the lives of distinguished Jews. There is also an 8-book set on the origins of the State of Israel. The project is called Jewish Lives and is “a partnership of Yale University Press and the Leon D. Black Foundation.”
On May 3, 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that
…between 2013 and 2017, Epstein planned at least three dozen meetings with Mr. Barak [Ehud Barak, the former Prime Minister of Israel]. They had appointments every month for 11 consecutive months starting in December 2015, the documents show….
The 2004 public tax filing for the Wexner Foundation shows that it paid $1 million to Ehud Barak that year as an outside contractor for “research.” (See page 6. Page 4 indicates that Jeffrey Epstein is in charge of the books of the Wexner Foundation.)
Long before Epstein was holding his secret confabs with Ehud Barak in Wexner’s former mansion in Manhattan, Les Wexner’s Foundation was strategizing on how to sell the war in Iraq to the American people while polishing the image of Israel.
In 2003, a bombshell document was leaked from the Wexner Foundation. The document was titled: “Wexner Analysis: Israeli Communication Priorities 2003.”
The underlying premise of this Israel thought control project is a “Warning” found on page 4 of the 17-page document. It reads:
There are some who would say that Saddam Hussein is already old news. They don’t understand history. They don’t understand communication. They don’t understand how to integrate and leverage history and communication for the benefit of Israel. The day we allow Saddam to take his eventual place in the trash heap of history is the day we loose [sic] our strongest weapon in the linguistic defense of Israel.
There is a self-admission in the document that it was created for the Wexner Foundation and has been tested with focus groups. A footnote reads:
This is not a policy document. This document is strictly a communications manual. As with every memo we provide, we have used the same scientific methodology to isolate specific words, phrases, themes and messages that will resonate with at least 70% of the American audience. There will certainly be some people, particularly those on the political left, who will oppose whatever words you use, but the language that follows will help you secure support from a large majority of Americans. These recommendations are based on two ‘dial test’ sessions in Chicago and Los Angeles conducted during the first ten days of the Iraqi war for the Wexner Foundation.
On July 31, 2023, Linda Singer, an attorney at Motley Rice representing the U.S. Virgin Islands, docketed a prior letter to the court suggesting that JPMorgan Chase had withheld critical information during discovery. Singer wrote:
On the afternoon of Friday, June 30, 2023, one month after the end of fact discovery, JPMorgan produced a spreadsheet listing the dates, beneficiaries—but not senders—and dollar values of over 9,000 transactions payable to Epstein-related persons that occurred between 2005 and 2019 and had a combined value of over $2.4 billion. Many of the entries reflected accounts and payments, numbering in the thousands and totaling in the hundreds of millions of dollars in value, of which USVI had no prior knowledge or information from JPMorgan’s responses and productions during the fact discovery period.
The names of the individuals who paid Epstein-related people $2.4 billion is critical to the public’s understanding of what this vast sex trafficking operation was really about and who financed it. Was this $2.4 billion for hush money payments? Was it fees for sex and/or Israel intelligence services?
The July 7 joint memorandum from the DOJ/FBI stated that its review of documents had “confirmed that Epstein harmed over one thousand victims.” That is a vast criminal operation involving the largest bank in the United States and it demands clear, precise answers to the American people.
JPMorgan Chase has attempted to portray itself in a more positive light by stating that it fired Epstein in 2013. But the veracity of that statement is called into question by a supplemental response to interrogatories that JPMorgan itself made with the court. It revealed that Justin Nelson, a banker at JPMorgan, had visited Epstein’s mansion in Manhattan, sometimes with colleagues, from 2012 through 2017. The filing stated:
Justin Nelson met with Epstein at his Manhattan townhouse on November 20, 2012; January 15, 2013; April 4, 2013 with Thomas McGraw; on April 24, 2013 with David Frame and Paul Barrett; June 6, 2013 with Chris French; May 8, 2014; December 3, 2014; May 4, 2015; September 29, 2015; November 19, 2015; December 14, 2015 with Carolyn Reers; February 14, 2017. In January 2016 he went to the Zorro Ranch….
Zorro Ranch was the name of the expansive residence that Epstein maintained in New Mexico, which was also involved in his sex-trafficking ring, according to Epstein’s victims.
There is another highly problematic internal document involving Nelson that has been submitted to the court. It involves Epstein wanting to open an account for his company called Southern Financial in 2013 and Nelson acting as a “sponsor” to get the account approved. Nelson signed off on the due diligence report on June 7, 2013, with a risk rating on the account downgraded from “high risk” to “standard risk,” despite the stunning information included in the document detailing Epstein’s alleged sexual assaults on dozens of girls in Palm Beach County, culminating in his serving 13 months in jail in 2008 and 2009.
The downgrade of the account from “high risk” to “standard risk,” not to mention having any account connected to Epstein at the largest federally-insured bank in the United States, came after years of the anti-money-laundering (AML) and compliance personnel at the bank calling Epstein in internal emails a “known child sleaze,” and “that scum Epstein,” while another staffer acknowledged that he was aware that Epstein had stocked his mansion with “nymphettes.” The same personnel were exhorting their supervisors to fire Epstein as a client, which was overruled, year after year, by an invisible hand at the top.
It was not until 2019 that federal prosecutors finally brought federal sex trafficking charges against Epstein and put him in jail to await trial. That prosecution followed a public outcry after Julie K. Brown’s explosive series on Epstein and his victims in the Miami Herald.
As early as 2007 and continuing for years, compliance staff at JPMorgan Chase were expressing concerns about the sums of hard cash that Epstein was withdrawing from the bank. The former FBI agent, Shaun O’Neill, submitted testimony to the court that in the early 2000s Epstein was withdrawing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in hard cash from the bank.
A bank is required to file a Suspicious Activity Report for any cash withdrawals in excess of $5,000 if they occur with frequency, appear suspicious, or lack a legitimate business purpose. In oral arguments for partial summary judgment before trial, a lawyer for the Virgin Islands, Mimi Liu of MotleyRice, told the court that JPMorgan Chase did not file any Suspicious Activity Reports until after Epstein died in his jail cell.
The U.S. Virgin Islands’ lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase contained deeply disturbing information about a top JPMorgan Chase bank executive’s close personal relationship with Epstein. According to the First Amended Complaint, Jes Staley, the head of JPMorgan’s Private Bank at the time, “exchanged approximately 1,200 emails with Epstein from his JP Morgan email account.” Several of the emails contained photos of young women in seductive poses and others further “suggest that Staley may have been involved in Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.” For example, the lawsuit reveals the following: “In July 2010, Staley emailed Epstein saying ‘That was fun. Say hi to Snow White [,]’ to which Epstein responded, ‘[W]hat character would you like next?’ and Staley said, ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ ”
Staley also visited Epstein while he was serving jail time in Florida and made multiple visits to Epstein’s private island in the Virgin Islands.
Staley was the head of JPMorgan’s asset management division from 2001 to 2009 and CEO of its investment bank from 2009 to 2013. Staley’s compromised relationship with Epstein is indicative of a lack of adequate money laundering controls and a complete failure of KYC (Know Your Customer) rules. According to the deposition transcript of Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Staley directly reported to Dimon and worked in an office located a few hundred feet from Dimon.
Equally problematic for JPMorgan, the former Director of Enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Stephen Cutler, was the General Counsel at JPMorgan Chase in 2007 – the same year that Jeffrey Epstein signed a secret non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice and one year before he got the sweetheart deal in Palm Beach County.
Cutler’s office was located next door to Dimon’s office. Cutler worked at the bank as General Counsel from 2007 to 2015 and Vice Chairman at the bank from 2015 to 2018. In that final position, Cutler functioned as a senior advisor to Dimon and the bank’s Board of Directors.
Internal emails clearly show that Cutler was aware that Epstein was a client. In an email, Cutler called Epstein “not an honorable person” and Cutler wanted him fired as a client. Given those emails, it is highly unlikely that Cutler would not have brought the matter to the attention of Dimon or the Board of Directors.
But according to the transcript of Dimon’s deposition conducted on May 26, 2023, Dimon’s position is this:
I don’t recall knowing anything about Jeffrey Epstein until the stories broke sometime in 2019. And I was surprised that I didn’t even — had never even heard of the guy, pretty much, and how involved he was with so many people.
There is a smoking gun email that may put that matter to rest if Congressional committees do their job and put witnesses like Dimon under oath. During Dimon’s deposition, David Boies introduced an email directly referring to a planned Epstein meeting with Dimon. The exchange went as follows:
Boies: “On February 26, 2010, Lesley Groff [an Epstein staffer] writes Mr. Epstein on the subject of, Jes [Staley] and Jamie. ‘Shall I have Lynn prepare heavy snacks for your evening appointments with [redacted], Jes Staley and Jamie Dimon? Or is this to be a nice, sit-down dinner at 9 p.m.?’ And Mr. Epstein replies, ‘Snacks.’ ”
Dimon responds in the deposition: “I have never had an appointment with Jeff Epstein. I’ve never met Jeff Epstein. I never knew Jeff Epstein. I never went to Jeff Epstein’s house. I never had a meal with Jeff Epstein. I have no idea what they’re referring to here.”
