Elizabeth Warren filed a bill Thursday to make the Federal Reserve open its Epstein files on the banks. Twenty-four Democrats signed it, and one Republican.
The bill requires the Fed and three other regulators, the FDIC, the OCC and the SEC, to hand over their Epstein records, compels them to investigate the banks and executives tied to him, and requires industry bans and civil penalties for anyone found to have helped him. The New York Times adds that they could make criminal referrals. Thomas Massie of Kentucky is the Republican. "Justice for the survivors means following the money," he said.
Warren has spent a year asking. She wrote to the Fed, the OCC and the FDIC last October and named Jes Staley, who ran JPMorgan's private bank. She wrote again in February and gave them until March 12. None of them would tell her an investigation existed. The Fed sent her a brief reply in June, and her office released it today. "Since they have failed to act, Congress must," she said.
The banks have paid. Not one regulator Warren wrote to has announced an investigation. JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America settled Epstein claims for $437 million, by the Times's count, and New York's banking regulator fined Deutsche $150 million in 2020. Ron Wyden's Senate Finance investigation found in August "significant evidence" that all three broke anti-money-laundering law by failing to screen and report Epstein's transactions in time. JPMorgan dropped Epstein in 2013 and filed its suspicious-activity report in 2019, after his arrest. Britain banned Staley from senior finance for misleading its regulator about Epstein, and a tribunal upheld the ban last year. Staley sat for the House Oversight Committee on July 23 and could not recall. James Comer let him answer in a transcribed interview, not under oath.
The Times says the midterms are moving the Epstein story to the banks. It wrote that congressional Democrats "are poised to turn their sights to the role that Wall Street played in enabling the sexual-abuse crimes of Jeffrey Epstein," and that committee staff are prepared to interview bankers and hold hearings if Democrats win either chamber. The Times also calls the bill unlikely to pass this year. It goes to committee, and Nov. 3 decides whether Warren and Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on House Oversight, get the gavels and the subpoenas.
