Bulwark Takes - Sen. Wyden: Banks Knew About Jeffrey Epstein and Looked Away

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) joins Catherine Rampell to discuss his years-long investigation into Jeffrey Epstein's finances and why he believes major Wall Street banks helped enable Epstein's sex trafficking operation by failing to report suspicious transactions. Wyden explains why he says top bank executives should be held accountable, responds to questions about the 60 Minutes interview that never aired, and lays out what Congress could do if Democrats retake the Senate. Wyden also breaks down his opposition to the bipartisan Russia sanctions bill, arguing that it would hand Trump sweeping new tariff powers that could drive up costs for American consumers.

Hi, everyone. I'm Catherine Rampel, economics editor at the Bullwork, and I am here with Senator Ron Wyden, delighted to talk with him about all things, trade, banking, money laundering, all sorts of sexy stuff today. Senator, thanks so much for joining me. I'm wondering if we could talk, first of all, about a recent report that you released relating to Wall Street Bank's relationships, with Jeffrey Epstein and others in that orbit. For the last few years, as I understand it, you and your team have been looking into the late Jeffrey Epstein's finances. What have you uncovered and what surprised you most?

What is the most important single aspect of this, Catherine, is Epstein would not have gotten away with all this sex trafficking for so incredibly long, if banks had done their job and followed the law. That is the single most important finding of our report. The bank executives knew Epstein was dirty, and they basically looked the other way. And what we do in the report is lay out a roadmap

for prosecution and further investigation. And the other point that really has been missed is that the people that were involved in this in the banks were not some junior deputy bottle washer kind of, you know, person. They were top people. They need to be held accountable. Some of them, for example, Mary Erdos, for example, at J.P. Morgan, they are still there and getting bonuses in the life. So can you dig in a little bit and explain to people what evidence we have that the banks and some of these particularly high-level executives may have known

what they were financing, may have known that their customer was using their accounts, potentially for lawbreaking. We go through a variety of examples in the report, but let me tell you about one that is really just hot off the presses that are just in the last couple of days. Deutsche Bank failed to promptly report to Treasury more than $250 million in the suspicious transactions tied to Epstein. That is brand new. That is this week. And it's clear that these big banks just didn't do their job. They looked the other way, which is the title of the report. Why did they do it? In my view, mostly because it led to more money for them. In other words,

if they stopped dealing with Epstein directly, they could say, oh, we're getting clean. but then they would take all of his referrals. And there are example after example of those kinds of things. And because you follow the federal regulatory agencies, I know very, very closely, I mean, Treasury, the Federal Reserve, DOJ, all of these agencies ought to follow the roadmap and start with what wasn't reported because this should have been, for the most part, reported to Treasury, and you deal with them more than I do, but FinCEN is kind of the lead in terms of Treasury. So you mentioned the Deutsche Bank example. I believe your report also found that

J.P. Morgan delayed reporting over $1 billion in suspicious Epstein-linked transfers to Treasury. Bank of America failed to properly screen and report $170 million in payments to Epstein. I should clarify all three banks deny that they actually. inappropriately, is your view that this was negligence, incompetence, or something potentially more deliberate? We've got emails, for example, from bankers talking about Epstein's preference for young girls, but they didn't report his money. So this comes up again and again, and I think it was because they could get away with it.

In other words, they always talk about, well, I reported such and such. Most of what they reported, Catherine, is retroactive. So the damage was done. Women and girls had been hurt. And they're going, oh, my goodness, we were all over it. And the fact is, they weren't. And they had a friendly administration that was supportive of it. And by the way, the Biden people helped a bit, but not a whole lot, nowhere near what I thought was necessary in terms of getting the SARS, the reports.

And to clarify, is your finding or contention that the banks had him as a customer and, you know, maybe that was inappropriate full stop or that they explicitly financed some of his unlawful activities? Well, he was a customer, but when you're looking the other way, you're enabling somebody to do all these horrifying things. And so you talked about what I started with. I went to the floor of the Senate. You know, those following your, you know, reporting and the like can see what we did. It was over a billion dollars of J.P. Morgan wire transfers. And nobody said anything. And when you have that kind of suspicious activity, this is not rocket science.

You're supposed to, under the laws, reported to the federal agencies and they didn't. You have called for federal regulators to investigate, to your knowledge, Has any of that happened? No, they got Bessent and Treasury Department stonewalled again and again. And they sent, you know, Republicans on the floor of the Senate to go and say everything's fine. You don't need any information. If the executive branch does not investigate Treasury or DOJ or any of the independent agencies for that matter, what options does Congress have here to hold anyone accountable? Well, the first thing I can tell you is, I believe.

we're going to retake the Senate. If we retake the Senate and I am the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, we will use our subpoena power to go get this information. We also make a variety of recommendations to get tough with both individual bankers and individual banks because there is culpability on both sides of that House. Can anything be done about actions that have already been taken, again, some of the findings that you have about banks potentially looking the other way in the past, or would everything that you would be able to do be prospective? Well, we're certainly going to focus on accountability that relates to abuses in the past, but we're following up right now, for example, a number of the victims groups have asked for

some of the information. Some of them have actually used it. And these court proceedings proceed very slowly, but they're even making progress in the lower courts. Were you able to find any additional evidence about people beyond Jeffrey Epstein, but others in his network and his orbit who may have also participated in crimes? You know, one of the frustrations, I think, particularly that I hear from victims, survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse, is that, yeah, there's been a lot of attention paid to him and one person has gone to jail, Galane Maxwell,

but he was obviously enabled and abetted and maybe colluding with lots of other people who may have also been participating in sex crimes through his facilitation. So were you able to uncover anything that potentially would allow law enforcement to hold other people, accountable. So not just the banks, not just, you know, the late Epstein estate, but others, yeah.

We found some very alarming questions with respect to the people around Epstein who for years have denied these are his financial people who said, oh, I just wrote up the forms and I didn't have anything to do with it. I didn't find those very plausible. But what's important here is this is the first and only follow the money effort into Epstein's activities. And the history in our country is that if you really want to root out corruption, you have to follow the money. And I wanted to just make a point with respect to Leon Black, the financier. That's why we got into this. You know, my guys, I have terrific investigators. I went to school on a basketball scholarship. I recruit these guys like their LeBron James or something. And what we found is that Leon Black was doing stuff

that was just implausible. He gave Epstein like 170 million, some gigantic sum of money. He said it had to do with legal assistance. He's not a lawyer. His own lawyers thought it was ridiculous that he gave him so much money. And same with the state planning. And that's how you catch people who are engaged in corrupt activity. And we're going to continue to focus. on it. Notable part of your report, the report that your office released, related to 60 minutes. As I understand it, you were interviewed by Sharon Alfonzi into how major financial institutions had handled Epstein's accounts that story did not air. Alfonzi was fired a couple of months after your interview. What is your interpretation of what happened there? Well, first of all, I'd

encourage you to reach out to her because she was pretty outspoken. And, uh, I've appreciated her comments, but the reality is that she filmed a major program. We were in the Finance Committee office for a long time. She came to the Senate office for a decent chunk of, her staff came to the Senate office for a decent chunk of time. And I just think they threw the game because we had a specific effort to reach out to her question. She asked about matters relating to the Virgin Islands, where there was also corrupt activity going on. we went through all this in great detail. And we were led to believe that it was going to have been on by now. Just so our audience knows, CBS released the statement saying we are proud of our aggressive and extensive reporting on the Epstein scandal.

That reporting continues. We air pieces when they are ready and suggesting that an interview is being suppressed for any reason is categorically false. I would only respond by way of saying they haven't done zip on anything relating to the money. and the follow the money kind of effort has been a blank for 60 minutes. Yep. Well, as you say, you know, I think it is sort of untroded territory for years. So I'm very glad that your investigators were able to put this together. So on a separate note, I wanted to ask you about a different issue that I know that your office and you in particular are working on. There is a bill that is moving its way through the Senate, the Lindsay Graham, Russia sanctions bill that, as I understand it, would massively expand Donald Trump's tariffing authority.

And you are working to try to strip that from the bill. Could you lay out some of your concerns with what this legislation would do? My biggest concern, and we see it is, you know, Trump is now looking at scores of additional countries. that he wants to tariff. The idea of giving Donald Trump more tariff authority strikes me as one of the most flawed economic theories I've heard in ages. And these tariffs are taxes, number one. Trump, by the way, under the existing sanctions law, we sent our lawyers out to really look at this in detail. He's got all the authority he needs for sanctions. He wants to do this as a way to hit the country with more tariffs because he thinks that's the way to go. And I pointed out to my colleagues, the number one

concern that we've had as Senate Democrats is we've been concerned about the cost of living. That is our top priority. And my concern is all these extra tariffs this fall are going to hit Americans with extra expenses, extra taxes. People are going to find it harder to pay for gas and food and rent and all the rest. I think this is a major mistake from an economic standpoint. And in terms of, you know, politics, I think it's just a huge mistake that undermines the affordability and cost of living agenda. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the frustrations that a lot of Americans have, not, you know, everyone from, you know, nerdy, propeller-headed experts who fixate on trade to normal people who are just trying to buy their groceries is that Congress is supposed to have power of the purse. they are supposed to be regulating international commerce and laying taxes. You're being logical.

And this president has seized a lot of that authority that is the Constitution says Congress is supposed to have. He has seized a lot of it. The court says unlawfully, unconstitutionally. And here this bill would willingly hand over more power to the president to lawfully impose tariffs. mandate that he impose more tariffs, in fact. And I guess my question is, how did this bill get this far? I mean, 80 plus members of the Senate, including lots of Democrats, have helped push this bill forward. So I don't understand, like, how we got to this point where this is so close.

Well, every single Democrat that I know feel strongly about trying to help Zelensky and trying to help his government. So start with that. said, let's do that and saw off the tariff provision. I think Lindsey Graham came in, put together a bulldozer and made it out like this was necessary, but it's not. Does the legislation actually even require the president to get tougher on Russia or help Ukraine? My understanding is that, like, there are no new sanctions authorities in this. It just sort of implores Trump to get tougher. When it comes to the sanctions and the language, there's very little there, there. This is all about giving Trump more flexibility. It's why he signed off. I don't think he's going to do

anything to his buddy Putin because he hasn't done anything to him really before. And I think he's going to hit the consumer with these taxes and tariffs and extra expenses. Do you think Democrats would own some of the potential costs here then if this bill does get through? Right now, I can tell you, my Democratic colleagues come up and say, Ron, how can we help Zelensky without having all these tariffs, and I try to find ways to answer the question. Okay. Well, we're still waiting for the answer to that question, but not from you, but potentially from some of your colleagues. So, yes, thanks for your work on that, you know, like many people out there. The more you can do because you're our economics authority to just

say, look, sanctions you can do under existing rules. Why is everybody trying to inflict the American people with more economic pain related to groceries and rent and gas and all the like. And that's what I keep coming back to. This is not a close call, in my view, with respect to economics. Fair enough. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, thanks so much for your time today. And would love to have you back anytime. Let's do it again.