Search Results for: epstein

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 26, 2024 ~ Editor’s Note: This article has been edited and updated from an earlier version, published in 2020. Trump and Catch and Kill: Yesterday, David Pecker, the former Chairman and CEO of American Media Inc. (AMI), the parent company of the National Enquirer tabloid, testified for a third day in the 34-count criminal trial of former President Donald Trump in New York. Pecker continued to expand on the sordid details of a catch and kill operation he had agreed to operate with the active involvement of Trump and his then attorney, Michael Cohen. The operation involved buying up stories about Trump’s salacious affairs with women and then killing them from publication in order to help Trump’s campaign for the presidency in 2016. There was also an understanding that Pecker would run negative articles about Trump’s political opponents in the National Enquirer. During opening … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 27, 2024 ~ On Friday, February 16, ahead of a three-day weekend, JPMorgan Chase quietly filed its 10-K (annual report) with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The document carried the bombshell that the bank had paid an astonishing $1.4 billon in legal expenses in 2023 – a 426 percent increase over the prior year’s legal expenses. While the bank didn’t break down the names of the law firms that received the lion’s share of those legal expenses, public records can fill in most of the blanks. Throughout 2023, JPMorgan Chase was paying the expensive lawyers at WilmerHale to defend it against a federal lawsuit brought by the David Boies law firm, Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, on behalf of the raped, assaulted, and sex trafficked underage victims of Jeffrey Epstein. JPMorgan was also paying WilmerHale lawyers throughout 2023 to defend it against Epstein-related charges brought … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 16, 2024 ~ After hurling salacious allegations for months against Jes Staley in a federal lawsuit JPMorgan Chase had brought against its former executive, the bank decided last September to quietly settle the case without disclosing the terms. The bank sued Staley after it had been sued by victims of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and after it had been sued in a separate lawsuit by the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein owned a private island compound that was a frequent venue of Epstein’s sex trafficking of minors. Lawyers for the U.S. Virgin Islands charged that JPMorgan Chase had “actively participated in Epstein’s sex-trafficking venture from 2006 until 2019.” (Both cases were settled last year by the bank, with it paying a whopping $290 million to the victims and $75 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands.) The bank’s lawsuit against Staley appeared … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 12, 2024 ~ The U.S. Senate Finance Committee, part of the legislative branch of the U.S. government, is investigating why Wall Street billionaire Leon Black gave sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein $158 million. But the Senate has made no mention of investigating the more than $100 million in unexplained money and property that former retailing magnate and billionaire Leslie Wexner gave to Epstein. The Securities and Exchange Commission, part of the executive branch of the U.S. government, denied our Freedom of Information Act request for documents relating to Leslie Wexner’s relationship with Epstein. The Department of Justice, also part of the executive branch, has failed to bring any charges against Wexner. The federal courts in the Southern District of New York, part of the judicial branch of government, have locked up tight for years incriminating witness testimony involving Leslie Wexner. Earlier this week, one of those … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 8, 2024 ~ According to the complaint filed by lawyers for Jeffrey Epstein’s victims against the biggest bank in America, JPMorgan Chase, Epstein was running a “sex-themed cult.” According to a deposition of a JPMorgan banker, the only money-generating business that Epstein had was tending to his “network.” According to witness testimony, fulfilling the sexual fantasies of some men in Epstein’s “network,” was how he obtained six opulent homes and hundreds of millions of dollars in wealth. Epstein’s cult and network needed one essential ingredient to thrive: a financial institution willing to look the other way at vast sums of hard cash being withdrawn monthly and suspicious transfers of money between Epstein and his accomplices. Epstein found that for at least fifteen years at JPMorgan Chase according to documents and internal emails obtained in discovery in separate lawsuits against the bank in November and December … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 3, 2024 ~ Over the past week, more than a dozen of the biggest mainstream news outlets have published articles about the possibility of scandalous news breaking this week from the unsealing of documents in a federal court case involving the sex trafficker of minors, Jeffrey Epstein. Typically, responsible news outlets wait for the actual news to break before hyping the possibility of it breaking. At 5:59 a.m. this morning, Newsweek updated the story as follows: “Some on social media are speculating that the public disclosure of more than 150 names associated with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has been delayed. “Judge Loretta A. Preska signed an order on December 18 for the public release of the identities of more than 150 people mentioned in court documents from a now-settled 2015 civil lawsuit filed by Virginia Giuffre that centered on allegations that Epstein’s associate and former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell facilitated her sexual … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 9, 2023 ~ On October 20 we reported that JPMorgan Chase, a serial recidivist when it comes to crime, had paid $1.085 billion in legal expenses in just the last six months. A nice chunk of that money went to the Big Law firm, WilmerHale, which has been representing JPMorgan Chase this year in multiple lawsuits involving the bank’s dark history of financial dealings with child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. (See Related Articles at the bottom of this article.) When the largest bank in the United States pays big bucks to a law firm with a roster of 1,000 attorneys, it doesn’t expect its $290 million class action settlement with Jeffrey Epstein’s victims to blow up in its face just days before the final Fairness Hearing – a legally required court event to determine if the terms of the agreement are “fair, adequate and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 6, 2023 ~ There are extremely strange things happening in a very high-profile federal court case in Manhattan where the largest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase, stands accused by victims of facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring that sexually abused minors as the bank doled out $40,000 to $80,000 a month in hard cash for more than a decade without filing the legally required Suspicious Activity Reports. Further implicating the bank is the fact, documented by internal emails, that executives and staff of JPMorgan Chase were visitors to Epstein’s Manhattan mansion where rapes and sexual assaults of minors have been alleged by victims as occurring. (See our report: A JPMorgan Court Filing Shows Another Bank Exec Visited Jeffrey Epstein’s Sex-Trafficking Residences 13 Times – Two More Times than Jes Staley.) A recent entry on the docket of the case shows that a federal … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 1, 2023 The Attorneys General of 16 states and Washington, D.C. are challenging the settlement crafted by Big Law firm WilmerHale on behalf of JPMorgan Chase and by the high-profile lawyer, David Boies, on behalf of the sex-trafficked victims of the late Jeffrey Epstein. The class action settlement agreement was filed with the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York in June. The court set a date of November 9 for the final Fairness Hearing – a legal requirement for class action settlements where the court must hear from any objectors impacted by the agreement. Depending on the strength of those objections, the Court could decide to reject the settlement as not “fair, adequate and reasonable” as required under Rule 23 for class actions, and ask the parties to go back to the drawing board. The state Attorneys General filing the objection … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 27, 2023 ~ JPMorgan Chase would like the public to believe that it’s going to walk away from the sleaziest financial crime of the century just $365 million poorer in the process. That’s just not going to happen. Yesterday, the bank settled for $75 million the Jeffrey Epstein related claims brought by the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands, after settling class action claims brought by Epstein’s victims for $290 million in June. (The June settlement was so questionable that we initiated an inquiry into the presiding Judge, Jed Rakoff, who called it a “really fine settlement.”) Both lawsuits alleged that JPMorgan Chase actively participated in Epstein’s sex trafficking of minors enterprise by turning a blind eye to his ongoing crimes and failing to file the legally mandated Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) as Epstein took upwards of $40,000 to $80,000 in hard cash … Continue reading →