Bipartisan Lawmakers Introduce Epstein Wall Street Records Act to Force Fed and Three Other Regulators to Release Epstein-Related Records
WASHINGTON — Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, and Representative Robert Garcia of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, led a bipartisan group of lawmakers in Washington on October 15 in introducing the Epstein Wall Street Records Act. The bill has only been introduced and has not passed. Co-leads include Representative Ro Khanna, Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, Senator Richard Blumenthal, the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and Senator Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.
According to the Senate Banking Committee's official release, the bill would do three things. First, it would require four federal financial regulators — the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) — to disclose supervisory records related to Jeffrey Epstein and his associates to members of Congress and the American people. Second, it would force the regulators to investigate Epstein-connected banks and executives for possible banking, securities, or illicit financing violations. Third, it would mandate industry bars and civil penalties for executives who assisted Epstein's financial operations, as well as potential referrals of criminal violations to the Department of Justice if necessary.
The release cited reporting and congressional work as background: The New York Times Magazine reported that executives at JPMorgan assisted Epstein in evading internal controls meant to intercept suspicious activity, and an investigation by the Senate Finance Committee found significant evidence that JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of America violated federal anti-money laundering laws by failing to screen and report Epstein's suspicious financial transactions in a timely manner. Warren said she had spent the past year calling on the Trump administration's financial regulators to investigate the banks and executives, and that the regulators could not even confirm they had opened investigations. She also released responses from Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase that she described as unsatisfactory, noting that Goldman Sachs failed to respond to her and Representative Krishnamoorthi's latest letter.
"I have spent the last year calling on Donald Trump's financial regulators to launch investigations into the big banks and executives who may have enabled Jeffrey Epstein's horrific crimes," Warren said in the release. "Since they have failed to act, Congress must." Garcia said banks and financial institutions serviced Epstein's accounts and helped him move money, and that lawmakers need to know what the institutions and their executives knew, whether they complied with relevant law, and what regulatory agencies learned. Massie said the bill does for bank regulators what the Epstein Files Transparency Act did for files held by the Justice Department, the FBI, and U.S. Attorney's Offices, by requiring the files on Epstein's money to be released.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 联邦存款保险公司（FDIC）大楼，楼面可见机构名。FDIC 是法案要求公开记录的四家监管机构之一。Tony Webster 摄，CC BY 2.0，Wikimedia Commons。
