Wyden’s staffers, who went through Treasury records, said Jeffrey Epstein moved money through several banks to fuel his sex-trafficking activities.
WASHINGTON D.C., DC — Oregon’s U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden claims the Treasury Department has files related to Jeffrey Epstein — and he wants the Trump administration to release them.
“Somewhere in the Treasury Department, Mr. President, locked away in a cabinet drawer — it’s a big Epstein file that’s full of actionable information. Follow the money details about its financing and operations that await investigation,” he demanded Thursday.
The declaration by the high-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee is the latest in the saga that President Donald Trump has tried to dismiss since the bombshell announcement earlier this month that the Justice Department would not be releasing any more Epstein files to the public and that Epstein did not have a so-called “client list.”
But it’s not just Democrats like Wyden calling for more records to be made public. Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, proposed that the administration should simply bite the bullet.
“Why don’t we just release it and deal with it? If it’s embarrassing because it’s not substantive, that’s fine. If it’s embarrassing because somebody’s implicated, that’s fine. We just need to solve it,” he said Thursday.
Meanwhile, Wyden referenced a report in the New York Times that goes into greater detail of what some of Wyden’s staffers found when going through confidential files, who say Epstein moved money through several banks to fuel his sex-trafficking network.
“Last year, the Biden administration allowed Finance Committee investigators to look at portions of the file in person over at the Treasury building,” he began. “Treasury’s Epstein file details 4,725 wire transfers adding up to nearly $1.1 billion flowing in and out of just one of Epstein’s bank accounts. If you ask me, that’s potential lines of investigation right there.
“Again, these are all potential leads the Department of Justice ought to be digging into. This is about years and years of international sex trafficking. None of this is a hoax. None of it is a scam. It’s insulting to the intelligence of the American people when Trump and Bondi say there’s nothing here to investigate here.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, when asked about releasing more Epstein files, pointed to Joe Biden’s tenure in the White House from 2021-24. Epstein died in 2019, during Trump’s first term.
“The Democrats had control of this building, the White House, for four years, and they didn’t do a dang thing when it came to transparency in regards to Jeffrey Epstein and his heinous crimes,” she said. “It was this president who directed the Department of Justice and the attorney general to do an exhaustive review of all files related to Jeffrey Epstein, which they did.”
Wyden argues that since the Department of Justice did such an exhaustive review of the files — why not give the files in the Treasury to Congress?
“Give the Treasury Department’s Epstein file to the Senate. Let the Senate follow the money. If Trump’s people think they need additional authority to make that happen, I’ll help them write the bill myself,” he said.
“The idea that there’s nothing more to investigate when it comes to Epstein’s sex trafficking operation is just ridiculous. Pam Bondi was the attorney general in the state of Florida, where a lot of Epstein’s crimes were committed. She ought to know better, of all people.”
Bondi on Friday said she would seek court permission to release grand jury transcripts, which would require a judge’s approval, according to the Associated Press.