Dem
47
GOP
53
There is a federal law requiring banks to turn over information about transactions they suspect might possibly be illegal. These are called SARs (Suspicious Activity Reports). Then it is up to the government to investigate to see if indeed any laws were broken.
The New York Times is now reporting that JP Morgan Chase flagged and reported 4,700 transactions, totaling over $1 billion, in and out of Jeffrey Epstein's account at Chase, from 2003 until his mysterious death in a prison cell in July 2019. Despite the treasure trove of information, the FBI—which is supposed to, you know, investigate—did nothing. There are a vast number of loose ends and clues in the SARs, including large transactions with two big Russian banks, Alfa Bank and Sberbank. While the SARs aren't the full Epstein files, a large number of names are named there.
Last Thursday, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff unsealed hundreds of pages of documents relating to the SARs in response to requests from the Times and WSJ. It will take a while for reporters to comb through them all and do whatever follow-ups they get interested in. One hallmark of Epstein's transactions was withdrawals of huge amounts of money in cash, far more than Epstein would have needed to go shopping. These could have been cash payoffs to the victims of his sex-trafficking empire, to keep the victims quiet.
Among other names listed in the unsealed files are millionaires Leon Black, co-founder of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management, hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, lawyer Alan Dershowitz and retail tycoon Leslie Wexner.
This dump makes control of the House even more important than it was. If Democrats capture the House, they will have subpoena power. They can then force Chase to cough up records of every transaction Epstein ever did in the last 20 years of his life. With that information, they can begin issuing subpoenas to the people who sent money to Epstein and the people who got money from Epstein, at least those in the U.S.
For example, it is known that Black paid Epstein $158 million for "tax and estate planning." That is completely absurd. First, Epstein was neither an accountant nor a tax lawyer. In fact, he never even graduated from college. College dropouts cannot command $158 million for simply doing tax planning. Period. There are many high-end tax lawyers who are experts on tax planning who can surely do a better job and for less. Even if the lawyer spent 100 hours making a plan at $10,000/hr, that is only $1 million.
Inquiring minds want to know if Black was one of Epstein's "clients," who later discovered the hard way that Epstein's private island was full of hidden video cameras. If so, then maybe the $158 million transfer had nothing to do with tax planning. A Democratic House could subpoena Black, remind him of the perjury laws, and then ask, under oath, to please explain why he chose Epstein to do his tax planning for a fee 100x more than what any actual high-end tax lawyer would charge. The House could even try to subpoena the tax plan Epstein made. Armed with the documents Rakoff unsealed and subpoena power, House Democrats could probably piece together how Epstein made his money and from whom. Those 4,700 bank transactions could have many, many, many clues in them, both the inbound and outbound transactions. (V)