Senate Democrats are preparing for an investigation. JP Morgan ChaseIf he takes control of Congress early next year, he will also end the bank’s ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Democratic staffers on the Senate Finance Committee intend to pursue how JPMorgan executives handled Mr. Epstein, a person familiar with the committee’s thinking told CNBC on Thursday. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because no investigation into the country’s largest bank has been announced.
Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, currently the committee’s ranking member, is likely to chair the Finance Committee starting in January. Wyden has made clear that he intends to take full advantage of the committee’s majority subpoena power.
Democratic staffers are aiming to focus specifically on the decisions made by Mary Callahan Eldeyes, the CEO of JPMorgan’s wealth and asset management division, regarding Mr. Epstein, the sources said.
JPMorgan declined to comment. The bank has previously said it regrets its involvement with Epstein but did not aid or abet his crimes.
Eldeez said in a 2023 deposition that he knew as early as 2006 that Epstein was accused of paying cash to bring underage girls to his home. Epstein had been a client of the bank since 1998.
Epstein was registered as a sex offender in Florida in 2008 after pleading guilty to state criminal charges of soliciting underage girls for prostitution.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said in his deposition in 2023 that Mr. Erdos had the authority to cut Mr. Epstein off as a client. She didn’t take that step until 2013.
Epstein, a former friend of President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton and many other celebrities, committed suicide in prison in August 2019, weeks after being arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges.
In 2023, lawyers for the U.S. Virgin Islands told a federal judge in New York that JPMorgan “was Jeffrey Epstein’s full-service sex trafficking bank” and that it did not notify the Treasury Department of $1 billion in suspicious transactions related to Epstein’s human trafficking until after Epstein’s suicide.
“This was a CYA report that looked at all the money that went into JPMorgan accounts over a 16-year period after his death,” attorney Mimi Liu said.
JPMorgan has accused former investment banker Jess Staley of concealing or failing to report criminal activities that involved close ties to Epstein.
Mr. Staley, who left JPMorgan in 2013 and later became CEO of Barclays before retiring in 2021, has denied knowledge of Mr. Epstein’s crimes.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said that after meeting privately with Staley in July, the former executive encouraged JPMorgan to keep Epstein as a client.
In mid-2023, JPMorgan agreed to a $290 million settlement with Epstein’s victims without admitting wrongdoing. That same year, JPMorgan agreed to pay $75 million to settle a separate lawsuit by the U.S. Virgin Islands that alleged the bank facilitated and profited from Epstein’s sex trafficking of young women.
In August, Mr. Wyden released a report accusing bank executives of “turning a blind eye” as Mr. Epstein moved hundreds of millions of dollars to finance his years-long sex trafficking operation.
“This report reveals how top bankers delayed reporting Mr. Epstein’s suspicious financial activities to the U.S. government and shielded him from federal oversight, likely in violation of federal anti-money laundering laws,” Wyden’s office said in a statement that month.
“It includes new details about the extent of suspicious activity reported by Deutsche Bank after Epstein’s death, new details from bank reports filed regarding suspicious money transfers to Epstein through Bank of America accounts. It also includes the names of executives at JPMorgan Chase and other banks who were responsible for reporting Epstein’s suspicious activities to the government, but who also sheltered Epstein for his access to Leon Black and other billionaires.
Mr. Black, the former CEO of Apollo Global Management, was revealed to have paid Mr. Epstein $158 million for financial advice in the years following his 2008 conviction.
Mr. Black sued the House Oversight Committee in September, seeking to block subpoenas issued to him seeking testimony and documents related to the Epstein investigation.
Mr. Black on Wednesday sued Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., who is slated to become the Oversight Committee chairman in the next Congress, alleging that Mr. Garcia defamed him with comments he made about Mr. Epstein. The lawsuit focuses on Garcia’s claims in a television interview that Black was “a central figure in Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes” and “one of the last people he actually interacted with” before Epstein’s death.
The Justice Department’s trove of files related to Epstein became a major focus in late 2025 and early 2026 after Congress passed a bill ordering the Justice Department to release these records.
Trump’s name is mentioned thousands of times in the released files.
The president has not been charged with any wrongdoing related to Epstein, with whom he had a feud in the early 2000s.
