Trump’s Epstein Fiasco Takes Darker Turn as Dem Senator Drops New Bomb
Ron Wyden has some ideas for Pam Bondi
to pursue—if, that is, she’s genuinely interested in getting to the bottom of
the Epstein scandal.
A
few days ago, as the Jeffrey Epstein scandal gripped Washington, Senator Ron
Wyden offered a striking revelation in an
interview with The New York Times. The Oregon
Democrat said that his investigators had discovered that four big banks had
flagged to the Treasury Department $1.5 billion in potentially suspicious money
transfers involving Epstein, much of which appeared to be related to his
massive sex-trafficking network.
The
revelation—which emerged via Wyden’s work as ranking Democrat on the Finance
Committee—ratified widespread suspicions that there is still much we don’t know
about Epstein’s relations with some of the most powerful and wealthy elites in
the world in the lead-up to his 2019 arrest on sex-trafficking charges.
Now
Wyden is ratcheting things up once again. Wyden’s office just sent a new letter
to Attorney General Pam Bondi—which The New Republic obtained—suggesting
seven potent lines of inquiry that the Justice Department could follow, right
now, to dig more deeply into Epstein’s web of financial relations with global
elites.
“I
am convinced that the DOJ ignored evidence found in the U.S. Treasury
Department’s Epstein file, a binder that contains extensive details on the
mountains of cash Epstein received from prominent businessmen that Epstein used
to finance his criminal network,” Wyden writes in the letter.
The
Treasury Department has this information because that’s where banks file
suspicious activity reports, or SARS. Wyden’s letter says his staff has
documented that Epstein-related filings by banks contain “information on more
than 4,725 wire transfers involving Epstein’s accounts, all of which merit
further investigation.”
Wyden’s
letter seeks to demonstrate what the Trump administration is not doing
to examine Epstein’s financial relations with the rich and powerful. This comes
after Bondi’s recent announcement that
there’s no evidence of any Epstein “client list,” which appeared to close the
door on any release of the “Epstein files,” the trove of evidence gathered by
law enforcement in connection with his arrest. That has persuaded much of the
MAGA movement—and many liberals and Democrats—that
a lot is being kept hidden about his activities that would implicate other
elites.
Wyden’s
move here is in some ways a trolling exercise, since DOJ won’t act on it. But
such trolling by lawmakers can be constructive if it communicates new
information to the public or highlights the failure of others in power to
exercise oversight and impose accountability. Wyden’s letter does both.
For
instance, Wyden suggests that DOJ prosecutors and FBI agents should
“immediately investigate the evidence contained in the Treasury Department
records on Epstein.” Wyden’s investigators know of these records because his
office has been examining Epstein’s financial transactions for several years.
In February 2024—when Democrats controlled the Senate—Wyden’s staff viewed in
camera (that is, privately) thousands of pages of Treasury files documenting
those transactions.
That
review brought to Wyden’s attention the $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions
flagged to Treasury by big banks, which is detailed in the Times report.
Wyden’s letter fleshes out these revelations, noting starkly that Treasury’s
“Epstein file contains significant information on the sources of funding behind
Epstein’s sex trafficking activities.”
That
appears to mean Wyden’s investigators saw evidence in those SARS that a large
chunk of the money that passed through Epstein’s network was related to that
sex trafficking. As the letter notes:
Epstein clearly had access to enormous
financing to operate his sex trafficking network, and the details on how he got
the cash to pay for it are sitting in a Treasury Department filing cabinet.
To
be fair, it’s unclear whether DOJ has or has not examined these Treasury files;
it’s possible it has done so. But Wyden’s office notes that at minimum, DOJ has
a responsibility to say whether it has done this and, if so,
what this review unearthed. DOJ has not replied to Wyden’s questions in this
regard, his office says.
Wyden’s
letter also lays out other lines of inquiry for DOJ, urging examination of a
number of specific payments to Epstein by several wealthy financiers that his
investigators discovered. The letter also suggests subpoenaing banks that filed
these SARS, in case they failed to report on Epstein-related transactions that
remain unknown.
In
an intriguing move, Wyden also presses DOJ to examine “hundreds of millions of
dollars in wire transfers” discovered by his investigators that passed through
“several now-sanctioned Russian banks.” The latter adds suggestively: “It
appears that these wire transfers were correlated to the movement of women or
girls around the world.”
Wyden
also urges DOJ to investigate banks that failed to report on suspicious Epstein
transfers in a timely manner and to depose bankers who presided over large
Epstein-related transactions, among other things.
All
this could worsen this fiasco for Trump. Right now the White House insists that he personally favors
transparency on the Epstein files but is letting Bondi, DOJ, and the FBI decide
how to proceed. Miraculously, they are opting not to divulge the files beyond
moving to release grand jury testimony, the one thing Trump has ordered them to
seek, as it’s unlikely to be revelatory.
Given
Trump’s professed desire for transparency, it’s unclear why he won’t simply
order the full files released. With new reporting suggesting Trump
might have been closer to Epstein than previously known, the possibility that
Trump himself is in the files—whether in incriminating fashion or not—can’t be
dismissed.
Wyden
is also demanding that Treasury release to Congress these SARS documenting
Epstein’s transactions. Yet Treasury is apparently refusing, making the
administration’s obfuscation look even darker.
In
that regard, Wyden’s office also offers another revelation. In the Times piece, a Treasury
spokesperson dismissed Wyden’s demand for release of these documents, insisting
that when Joe Biden was president, Wyden “never asked” for this information,
exposing the demand as “political theater.”
But
Wyden’s office says this is false. The in-camera review by Wyden staffers of
Treasury documents in February 2024 itself shows that Wyden sought this info
from the Biden administration—and that he got access to it.
What’s
more, a Wyden aide tells me that in 2024, soon after Wyden’s staff viewed these
Treasury documents in camera, Wyden actively moved to get the Senate to
subpoena their release. Because Finance Committee rules require bipartisan
support for subpoenas, Wyden sought the backing of several GOP senators on the
committee, including now-chairman Mike Crapo and Marsha Blackburn. But none
would support a subpoena, the aide says.
That
also has very dark implications, and you’d think MAGA would now intensify
pressure on Senate Republicans to seek access to these Treasury documents as
well. But with the Epstein scandal now threatening Trump with serious political
damage, a subset of powerful MAGA influencers—ones who initially thought the
files would expose pedophilia among elite Democrats—are suddenly losing their zeal to see
them divulged. House GOP leaders just scuttled a vote on
compelling their release.
That’s
why moves like this one by Wyden are important, and why Democrats should use
their limited power to do more of them. This would keep the spotlight focused
where it counts: The Trump administration possesses large amounts of
information about Epstein’s corrupt and depraved dealings with unidentified
members of the global elite, and Trump and his top advisers—with active GOP
acquiescence—are now all in on the elite cover-up.
