Your Weekend Message From The Master
Once Again, It's 'Follow The Money' Time
Every Saturday, Charles P. Pierce sends a newsletter to his paid subscribers. This is his latest.
Late Friday, the Republicans running interference for the president on this whole Epstein business, some of them having helped tree him on the matter of the files, regrouped and announced the mother of all distractions. They subpoenaed Bill and Hillary Clinton to give depositions about their involvement with the dead sex maniac. From the BBC:
The former president and secretary of state were called to answer questions from the GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee on December 17 and 18, respectively. Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican and the chair of the committee, said November 21 that any attempt by the Clintons, longtime political rivals of President Donald Trump, to avoid the depositions would be in defiance of congressional subpoenas. Comer is, of course, a joke, and this is as obvious a ploy as if he bought the president a fake mustache and shipped him off to Borneo. But on this particular one, I’m with Senator Chris Murphy, who responded to CNN’s John Berman’s question about what his reaction would be if “names connected to the Democratic party” were to emerge from the files. “Who cares?” Murphy replied.
I certainly don’t. If the Clintons have material relevant to Epstein’s sordid operations, I want them under oath to deliver it. This isn’t what Comer’s about, however. He knows if he throws the Clintons out there, an entire generation of political reporters whose formative years were spent during the Great Penis Hunt of the 1990’s will go immediately on point.
(Have I mentioned that Ken Starr was involved with Epstein’s defense team? And irony swallows 13 more Percocet with another pint of vodka.)
Comer wants yet another televised auto de fe starring the Clintons for the purposes of a) demonstrating that his entire existence in Congress is worth a damn, and b) to give the MAGA hordes something to chew on besides each other.
In a way, I pity that generation of political reporters, and the current one, as well. There was majesty in earlier scandals. Watergate. The Church Committee. Iran-Contra. Now, those were scandals. No penises need apply. Pure money and pure power politics. Secret assassination plots. Clandestine operations. Sub rosa deals with shady characters from around the world.
And what did the new reporters in the ‘90’s have? Powerful men and their flickering libidos? Stained blue dresses and Arkansas real estate law? And now, this. Sad tales from a corrupt and decadent elite? Wounded survivors and their long wanderings toward a kind of justice? The story of a Democratic Party, broken by the election of Ronald Reagan and so wanting a piece of the apparent rising political power that it sold out its principles and its most loyal voters to break off a piece? And now the apotheosis of that effort, President Bill Clinton and his two terms in the White House, being called before a congressionan committee of kooks and kangaroos to answer questions about that effort’s recreational sideshows as represented by a dead pervert’s speed dial? Except for the money. There is always the money.
A protester holds up a sign in front of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C..
ROBERTO SCHMIDT // Getty Images
One of the few mistakes made by the brilliant screenwriter William Goldman in his adaptation of All The President’s Men for the screen is attributing the advice, “Follow the money,” to Bob Woodward as coming from Deep Throat, the scandal’s nom de source for Deputy FBI director Mark Felt. The phrase doesn’t appear in the book by Woodward and Bernstein. But it remains capital advice. As we may very see as the Epstein investigations roll on.
The keys are two senators from Oregon—Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley. Both of them have been digging into what Merkley calls “Epstein Files 2,” a promising sequel in which they seek to find out what—and whom—Epstein may have purchased with the billions of dollars he apparently spread around when he was riding high.
On Friday, Wyden, the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Finance Committee released a new analysis of how megabank J.P. Morgan bankrolled Epstein’s empire of sleaze.
The analysis, contained in an 18-page Democratic staff memorandum, draws on recently unsealed court documents that included correspondence between top JPMorgan executives, as well as Senator Wyden’s own investigation of Epstein bank records. The records show top JPMC executives reporting directly to CEO Jamie Dimon closely supervised the relationship with Epstein. The memorandum also examines Epstein’s payments to Ghislaine Maxwell, who is now enjoying special privileges in a minimum-security facility, and the close involvement of accountant Harry Beller, who had signatory authority over Epstein’s accounts.
Among other findings, the memorandum states that JPMorgan severely underreported Epstein’s suspicious financial activity prior to 2019. While Epstein was alive and trafficking women and girls, the bank flagged a small number of transactions adding up to only slightly more than $4.3 million. After Epstein’s death in federal custody, the bank filed retroactive suspicious activity reports covering an amount nearly 300 times larger, almost $1.3 billion in thousands of transactions dating back to 2003.
A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon, you’re talking about serious money. How much influence can you peddle for that kind of dough? Wyden’s staff memorandum has a number of very piquant concerns.
1. JPMC underreported Epstein’s suspicious transactions to the U.S. government prior to Epstein’s arrest in 2019.
2. Jeffrey Epstein was one of JPMC’s single largest clients and part of an elite group referred to as JPMC’s “Wall of Cash.”
3. Top JPMC executive Mary Erdoes was in constant contact with Jeffrey Epstein.
4. JPMC executives maintained relationships with Epstein after terminating him as a client because of Epstein’s influence over billionaire Leon Black.
5. JPMC’s former CEO of Private Banking John Duffy counseled Epstein on how to execute suspicious cash withdrawals to avoid reporting requirements.
6. Emails show JPMC private bankers withheld information on Epstein’s suspicious activity from JPMC’s compliance department.
7. Epstein’s accountant Harry Beller was an integral part of Epstein’s financial operation and his potential links to sex trafficking crimes merits further investigation.
8. Jeffrey Epstein paid Ghislaine Maxwell at least $25 million, including a one-time payment of $19 million from his accounts at JPMC.
Upon release of this report, Wyden laid out the path forward, seeking to put the kind of heat on Treasury Scott Bessent that Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna brought on the House and the White House as regards the files.
“The Treasury Department also has its own Epstein file containing thousands of bank records, and that file is unaffected by the legislation Congress passed this week. My investigators saw a portion of that file in 2024, but Secretary Bessent has refused to produce it for further examination. That makes him a part of the Epstein coverup too. I plan to seek Senate approval of my bill to force the Treasury Department to release its Epstein file in the coming weeks because we need to continue following the money.”
Wyden on Wednesday expressed concern that the files—all of the files—are still in the hands of a Department of Justice run by an administration sock puppets. “I’m very concerned,” he said. “The reality is [Attorney General Pam] Bondi, [FBI director Kash] Patel, they’ve all been complicit in stonewalling and trying to keep real information of the kind that we believe is about following the money, which is what I’m committed to doing. America has not seen yet gotten to the bottom of the horrifying episode without following the money. What you have is a Treasury Secretary who has clearly made avoiding accountability a top priority in his office. He’s turned us down a number of times, and that’s what we’re up against.”
For his part, Merkley led the fight in the Senate to release the files that were subject to all the action in Congress this week, but he’s not done yet, and he sees the money trail as the next stage in the drama. “The Epstein files have always been about full accountability for the perpetrators and full justice for the victims,” he said. “The Treasury Department, $1.5 billion in business activity, Senator Wyden and his staff will run an investigation that will complement the information held by the Justice Department.”
J.P. Morgan’s Master of the Universe, Jamie Dimon, already has signed off on a couple of settlements related to his bank’s slow dance with Jeffrey Epstein: a $75 million deal with the U.S. Virgin Islands regarding JPMC’s connections with Epstein’s activities in those islands, and a $290 million settlement with Epstein’s victims to head off a class action suit by those women aimed at those same business relationships. But Wyden and Merkley both know there’s more in the files on which Bessent is sitting over in Treasury. And so do a lot of other people. On Wednesday night, Senator Professor Elizabeth Warren visited with Stephen Colbert, and together they speculated that the Epstein financial files might represent a comeuppance not only for the immediate crimes, but also for how the big banks skated on their involvement in the shady financial policies that led to the crash of 2008.
The money trail, it seems, goes on forever.
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