Earlier this month, 10 Democratic senators, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren, urged the Senate Banking Committee to hold hearings into JPMorgan’s ties to Mr. Epstein, who remained a client at the bank for years after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to a charge of soliciting prostitution from a teenage girl.
JPMorgan declined to comment. The pressure on JPMorgan comes after an investigation by The New York Times Magazine that examined the bank’s relationship with Mr. Epstein during a time when he was regularly sexually abusing teenage girls and young women. Some senior executives repeatedly ignored staff members’ concerns about Mr. Epstein opening accounts for young women and his repeated pattern of withdrawing tens of thousands of dollars in cash nearly every month — a potential indicator of sex trafficking, experts have said.
Mr. Wyden has been digging into Mr. Epstein’s financial backers for the past three years. As part of that investigation, Mr. Wyden’s staff examined billions of dollars in transactions that JPMorgan and other banks flagged as suspicious after Mr. Epstein’s arrest on federal charges in 2019. That included more than $1.1 billion in transactions involving JPMorgan, including hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to Russian banks and young women from Eastern Europe who were brought to the United States, according to Mr. Wyden’s investigation.
In his letter, Mr. Wyden asked Mr. Dimon to respond to nearly three-dozen questions concerning JPMorgan’s decision to keep Mr. Epstein as a client long after his 2008 guilty plea to state charges in Florida.
The senator cited Mr. Dimon’s recent comment that he would be willing to cooperate with congressional investigators, writing: “I intend to take you up on that.” Mr. Dimon, during a recent visit to Capitol Hill, had said he would comply with any “legal requirement” to produce documents or answer questions. But as a single senator and one in the minority, Mr. Wyden is limited in his ability to compel Mr. Dimon to answer questions.
Mr. Dimon previously said in a deposition that he didn’t recall knowing Mr. Epstein was a bank client until his 2019 arrest. But James E. Staley, a former top banker who had been one of the biggest advocates for keeping Mr. Epstein as a client, said in a deposition that he had discussed Mr. Epstein on at least two occasions with Mr. Dimon. Republicans have also taken an interest in Mr. Epstein’s banking relationships. Last week, Representative James R. Comer, a Kentucky Republican and chair of the House Oversight Committee, said the Treasury Department had begun giving his staff access to some redacted financial records that banks had deemed suspicious.
We aren’t slamming people anymore?