Grand Jury Transcript in Jeffrey Epstein Case Is Released, Raising Questions about Epstein’s Darkest Secrets Being Protected in JPMorgan Cases

 

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Grand Jury Transcript in Jeffrey Epstein Case Is Released, Raising Questions about Epstein’s Darkest Secrets Being Protected in JPMorgan Cases

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 3, 2024 ~

Jeffrey Epstein

On Monday, the transcript of the July 19, 2006 grand jury proceedings involving sexual assaults and rape by Jeffrey Epstein against underage girls in Palm Beach County, Florida was released by a Circuit Court. The Palm Beach Post newspaper had sued in that court for release of the transcript in 2019 in order to shine more light on how Florida State Attorney, Barry Krischer, had ignored a powder keg of evidence against Epstein that had been developed by the Palm Beach Police and cut a sweetheart deal under pressure from Epstein’s attorneys.

Florida legislation, signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis, called for the transcript to be released on or after July 1, in response to the extensive public interest in the case.

Despite police evidence that Epstein had sexually assaulted dozens of underage school girls, Krischer and the U.S. Department of Justice cut a deal that allowed Epstein to serve just 13 months in jail from June 2008 to July 2009 – the majority of the time in a work release program where Epstein was driven to an office each day by his limo driver.

After the work release program, Epstein was supposed to spend one year under house arrest at his Palm Beach residence. But in the Netflix documentary series on Epstein, Filthy Rich, based on the book by the same name, a Palm Beach police official explained what actually happened, stating as follows:

“He would violate his probation almost on a daily basis. There’s 11 pages here of just different violations. I think, I, myself, documented 66 different days that he violated his probation…He would go to New York, to his island, he would go to the airport, jump in his helicopter. Who knows where he went – without telling anybody. Every time I brought the probation office a case, they kept telling me the same thing. What would you like us to do? He’s a celebrity. I mean, just think about this: You have a pedophile out on probation – to violate probation in the state of Florida is illegal, except for Jeffrey Epstein.”

Despite having videotaped testimony from Epstein’s victims and statements confirming the abuse from a multitude of other witnesses, the U.S. Department of Justice allowed this pedophile to remain on the loose – traveling throughout the United States and around the world on his private jets – sexually abusing girls and young women at his multiple mansions for another decade, until his arrest on July 6, 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges. Epstein died in a Manhattan jail on August 10, 2019 – just a little more than a month after his arrest. The New York City Medical Examiner ruled his death a suicide.

The Department of Justice was likely shamed into finally taking action against Epstein in 2019 by reporter Julie Brown’s explosive series on Epstein’s sex crimes that appeared in the Miami Herald in November 2018.

The thrust of mainstream media’s reporting on the grand jury transcript since its release on Monday is the travesty in how the Florida state attorney’s office undermined its own case before the grand jury by outrageously portraying underage sexual assault victims as prostitutes.

But there may be an additional bombshell going unnoticed in that grand jury transcript. According to the Palm Beach County Police detective in charge of the Epstein case, Joe Recarey, the pedophile owned not five opulent homes – that have so frequently been reported – but six homes. Recarey testified in the grand jury proceeding that in addition to Epstein’s mansion in Palm Beach, he owned homes in New York, New Mexico, St. Thomas, Paris and “England.” While the first five homes have been widely reported, Wall Street On Parade is not aware of any mainstream media reporting of Epstein owning a home in the U.K. or England. If true, that could open up a broad new area of investigation since Epstein has already been charged by a victim of loaning her out for sex with Prince Andrew. That case was settled for a reported $16 million in 2022.

Wall Street On Parade’s focus on the Epstein case has centered on the fact that the largest federally-insured bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase, was supplying Epstein with the tens of thousands of dollars in hard cash each month to pay off his victims as well as the young women he hired to recruit more school girls that he could abuse. (JPMorgan Chase has an extensive operation in London.)

But despite the fact that JPMorgan Chase has a rap sheet that rivals that of an organized crime family, including five criminal felony counts, the U.S. Department of Justice has yet to bring a criminal case against the bank for aiding and abetting Epstein in his crimes – despite a mountain of detailed evidence developed by the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein owned his own so-called “Pedophile Island” and treated himself and his ultra rich pals to sexually abusing young girls within the isolated confines of his tropical paradise.

The opening witness in the grand jury proceeding of 2006 was Detective Recarey, who died in 2018. During his testimony, Recarey explained that he was a detective in the Palm Beach County Police’s special investigations unit where he pursued “long term investigations, financial crimes, white-collar crimes….” That is extremely relevant because there is strong evidence that serious financial crimes were occurring in tandem with Epstein’s sex crimes.

Previously released documents indicate that Recarey aggressively pursued the Epstein case and was not intimidated by Epstein’s power, money or teams of attorneys and private investigators who sought to dig up dirt on the victims to undermine their credibility. This raises the question – at what point, if any, did the Palm Beach County Police, which eventually turned their case over to the FBI, inquire into where Epstein was getting the tens of thousands of dollars in hard cash he needed monthly to pay off his victims and recruiters.

The federal lawsuit filed by the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands alleged that JPMorgan Chase had “actively participated” in Epstein’s sex trafficking. A  Memorandum of Law arguing for partial summary judgment in the case, that was filed by the Attorney General for the U.S. Virgin Islands, makes the following points:

“Even if participation requires active engagement…there is no genuine dispute that JPMorgan actively participated in Epstein’s sex-trafficking venture from 2006 until 2019. The Court found allegations that the Bank allowed Epstein to use its accounts to send dozens of payments to then-known co-conspirators [redacted] provided excessive and unusual amounts of cash to Epstein; and structured cash withdrawals so that those withdrawals would not appear suspicious ‘went well beyond merely providing their usual [banking] services to Jeffrey Epstein and his affiliated entities’ and were sufficient to allege active engagement.”

The U.S. Virgin Islands had previously alerted the court to the unfathomable sums of hard cash that Epstein was able to take from the accounts he maintained at JPMorgan Chase without the bank filing the legally mandated Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) to law enforcement. In the Memorandum linked above, it tallied up the giant pile of cash, writing as follows:

“Between September 2003 and November 2013, or approximately ten years, JPMorgan handled more than $5 million in outgoing cash transactions for Epstein — ignoring its own policy discouraging large cash withdrawals….”

The U.S. Virgin Islands’ attorneys cite to internal emails at JPMorgan Chase showing that employees at the bank were aware of Epstein’s “[c]ash withdrawals … made in amounts for $40,000 to $80,000 several times a month” while also being aware that Epstein paid his underage sexual assault victims in cash.

After a scorched earth campaign by JPMorgan Chase’s attorneys to humiliate the U.S. Virgin Islands in the media over its own unseemly political ties to Epstein, the case was settled, with the bank paying the U.S. Virgin Islands $75 million.

JPMorgan Chase’s involvement in the Epstein sex trafficking ring was also alleged in a class action lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase brought by lawyers David Boies and Bradley Edwards on behalf of Epstein’s victims. At a March 13, 2023 court hearing in the case, Boies argued in open court that JPMorgan Chase had used a private jet owned by the bank’s hedge fund, Highbridge Capital, to transport girls for Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. A January 13, 2023 amended complaint filed by Boies’ law firm provided the following details on that allegation:

“As another example of JP Morgan and [Jes] Staley’s benefit from assisting Epstein, a highly profitable deal for JP Morgan was the Highbridge acquisition.

“In 2004, when Epstein’s sex trafficking and abuse operation was running at full speed, Epstein served up another big financial payday for JP Morgan.

“Epstein was close friends with Glenn Dubin, the billionaire who ran Highbridge Capital Management.

“Through Epstein’s connection, it has been reported that Staley arranged for JP Morgan to buy a majority stake in Dubin’s fund, which resulted in a sizeable profit for JP Morgan. This arrangement was profitable for both Staley and JPMorgan, further incentivizing JP Morgan to ignore the suspicious activity in Epstein’s accounts and to assist in his sex-trafficking venture.

“For example, despite that Epstein was not FINRA-certified, Epstein was paid more than $15 million for his role in the Highbridge/JP Morgan deal.

“Moreover, Highbridge, a wholly-owned subsidiary of JP Morgan, trafficked young women and girls on its own private jet from Florida to Epstein in New York as late as 2012.”

With the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice still failing to take action against JPMorgan Chase for its alleged money laundering for Epstein, and the Boies/Edwards lawsuit on behalf of victims now settled for $290 million by JPMorgan Chase – with victims’ lawyers getting $87 million in legal fees and $2.5 million in expenses while victims are guaranteed nothing other than a requirement to release their claims – there is no assurance that the American people will ever get genuine transparency.

According to court filings in the Epstein/JPMorgan Chase cases, 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 powerful men in Epstein’s “network,” was how he obtained six opulent homes and hundreds of millions of dollars in wealth.

There is also the unseemly reality that Federal District Court Judge Jed Rakoff, who presided over the Epstein/JPMorgan Chase cases filed in Manhattan, has allowed the bulk of the deposition testimony and thousands of other documents to remain under seal.

WALL STREET ON PARADE