The Media Must Cover Epstein's Bankers as Co-Conspirators

A new Senate investigation by Sen. Ron Wyden has found that Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan Chase collectively facilitated over $1.4 billion in suspicious wire transfers for Jeffrey Epstein over two decades — transactions including cash withdrawals with no clear business purpose, payments to women and girls, and tens of millions to convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell — and only flagged them retroactively in 2019, after Epstein was arrested. Named bank executives ignored legal obligations to report suspicious activity because Epstein was a "load-bearing part of their wall of cash." Every one of those executives, save one, remains employed in lucrative positions today, facing zero regulatory discipline. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has blocked Wyden's requests for Epstein's bank records three times. And CBS — now controlled by Trump ally David Ellison — killed a finished 60 Minutes segment on the investigation and fired the reporter who led it.

This is not a tabloid story. It is a story about how American financial institutions actively enabled a serial child sex trafficker because he was profitable, how the current administration is blocking the investigation into those institutions, and how a newly consolidated media company just buried the journalism that would have told the public about it.

We call on the media to cover the Wyden report not as an Epstein footnote, but as the live corruption and cover-up story it is — one that runs from Wall Street boardrooms to the Treasury Department to a CBS newsroom. The public deserves reporting that names the bankers, follows the obstruction, and refuses to let this story be buried again.