A few days ago, as the Jeffrey Epstein scandal gripped Washington, Senator Ron Wyden offered a striking revelation in an interview with The New York Times. The Oregon Democrat said that his investigators had discovered that four big banks had flagged to the Treasury Department $1.5 billion in potentially suspicious money transfers involving Epstein, much of which appeared to be related to his massive sex-trafficking network.
The revelation—which emerged via Wyden’s work as ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee—ratified widespread suspicions that there is still much we don’t know about Epstein’s relations with some of the most powerful and wealthy elites in the world in the lead-up to his 2019 arrest on sex-trafficking charges.
Now Wyden is ratcheting things up once again. Wyden’s office just sent a new letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi—which The New Republic obtained—suggesting seven potent lines of inquiry that the Justice Department could follow, right now, to dig more deeply into Epstein’s web of financial relations with global elites.
“I am convinced that the DOJ ignored evidence found in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Epstein file, a binder that contains extensive details on the mountains of cash Epstein received from prominent businessmen that Epstein used to finance his criminal network,” Wyden writes in the letter.
The Treasury Department has this information because that’s where banks file suspicious activity reports, or SARS. Wyden’s letter says his staff has documented that Epstein-related filings by banks contain “information on more than 4,725 wire transfers involving Epstein’s accounts, all of which merit further investigation.”
Wyden’s letter seeks to demonstrate what the Trump administration is not doing to examine Epstein’s financial relations with the rich and powerful. This comes after Bondi’s recent announcement that there’s no evidence of any Epstein “client list,” which appeared to close the door on any release of the “Epstein files,” the trove of evidence gathered by law enforcement in connection with his arrest. That has persuaded much of the MAGA movement—and many liberals and Democrats—that a lot is being kept hidden about his activities that would implicate other elites.
Wyden’s move here is in some ways a trolling exercise, since DOJ won’t act on it. But such trolling by lawmakers can be constructive if it communicates new information to the public or highlights the failure of others in power to exercise oversight and impose accountability. Wyden’s letter does both.
For instance, Wyden suggests that DOJ prosecutors and FBI agents should “immediately investigate the evidence contained in the Treasury Department records on Epstein.” Wyden’s investigators know of these records because his office has been examining Epstein’s financial transactions for several years. In February 2024—when Democrats controlled the Senate—Wyden’s staff viewed in camera (that is, privately) thousands of pages of Treasury files documenting those transactions.
That review brought to Wyden’s attention the $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions flagged to Treasury by big banks, which is detailed in the Times report. Wyden’s letter fleshes out these revelations, noting starkly that Treasury’s “Epstein file contains significant information on the sources of funding behind Epstein’s sex trafficking activities.”
That appears to mean Wyden’s investigators saw evidence in those SARS that a large chunk of the money that passed through Epstein’s network was related to that sex trafficking. As the letter notes:
Epstein clearly had access to enormous financing to operate his sex trafficking network, and the details on how he got the cash to pay for it are sitting in a Treasury Department filing cabinet.
To be fair, it’s unclear whether DOJ has or has not examined these Treasury files; it’s possible it has done so. But Wyden’s office notes that at minimum, DOJ has a responsibility to say whether it has done this and, if so, what this review unearthed. DOJ has not replied to Wyden’s questions in this regard, his office says.
Wyden’s letter also lays out other lines of inquiry for DOJ, urging examination of a number of specific payments to Epstein by several wealthy financiers that his investigators discovered. The letter also suggests subpoenaing banks that filed these SARS, in case they failed to report on Epstein-related transactions that remain unknown.
In an intriguing move, Wyden also presses DOJ to examine “hundreds of millions of dollars in wire transfers” discovered by his investigators that passed through “several now-sanctioned Russian banks.” The latter adds suggestively: “It appears that these wire transfers were correlated to the movement of women or girls around the world.”
Wyden also urges DOJ to investigate banks that failed to report on suspicious Epstein transfers in a timely manner and to depose bankers who presided over large Epstein-related transactions, among other things.
All this could worsen this fiasco for Trump. Right now the White House insists that he personally favors transparency on the Epstein files but is letting Bondi, DOJ, and the FBI decide how to proceed. Miraculously, they are opting not to divulge the files beyond moving to release grand jury testimony, the one thing Trump has ordered them to seek, as it’s unlikely to be revelatory.
Given Trump’s professed desire for transparency, it’s unclear why he won’t simply order the full files released. With new reporting suggesting Trump might have been closer to Epstein than previously known, the possibility that Trump himself is in the files—whether in incriminating fashion or not—can’t be dismissed.
Wyden is also demanding that Treasury release to Congress these SARS documenting Epstein’s transactions. Yet Treasury is apparently refusing, making the administration’s obfuscation look even darker.
In that regard, Wyden’s office also offers another revelation. In the Times piece, a Treasury spokesperson dismissed Wyden’s demand for release of these documents, insisting that when Joe Biden was president, Wyden “never asked” for this information, exposing the demand as “political theater.”
But Wyden’s office says this is false. The in-camera review by Wyden staffers of Treasury documents in February 2024 itself shows that Wyden sought this info from the Biden administration—and that he got access to it.
What’s more, a Wyden aide tells me that in 2024, soon after Wyden’s staff viewed these Treasury documents in camera, Wyden actively moved to get the Senate to subpoena their release. Because Finance Committee rules require bipartisan support for subpoenas, Wyden sought the backing of several GOP senators on the committee, including now-chairman Mike Crapo and Marsha Blackburn. But none would support a subpoena, the aide says.
That also has very dark implications, and you’d think MAGA would now intensify pressure on Senate Republicans to seek access to these Treasury documents as well. But with the Epstein scandal now threatening Trump with serious political damage, a subset of powerful MAGA influencers—ones who initially thought the files would expose pedophilia among elite Democrats—are suddenly losing their zeal to see them divulged. House GOP leaders just scuttled a vote on compelling their release.
That’s why moves like this one by Wyden are important, and why Democrats should use their limited power to do more of them. This would keep the spotlight focused where it counts: The Trump administration possesses large amounts of information about Epstein’s corrupt and depraved dealings with unidentified members of the global elite, and Trump and his top advisers—with active GOP acquiescence—are now all in on the elite cover-up.
