Tag: secrecy

$1.2 Billion Suspicious Epstein Transactions? Wyden Demands Investigation After JP Morgan Failed To Report For Years

Now that we’re making progress on Epstein – after President Trump and Mike Johnson were forced to cave under overwhelming pressure for DOJ disclosure – a logical next step is to look into who was funding the notorious sex-trafficker. 

On Thursday morning, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) called for an investigation into whether JPMorgan Chase deliberately concealed suspicious transactions by Epstein. 

You really just need to look at Exhibit A in Wyden’s memo (dated Wednesday) based on unsealed court records: the number of transactions flagged as suspicious between 2002 – 2016, vs. a flurry of almost $1.3 billion in suspicious transactions that the bank scrambled to file right after Epstein died in jail awaiting trial. 

Wyden writes: 

The unsealed court records include copies of SARs that JPMC filed on Epstein’s accounts between 2002 and 2019. Between 2002 and 2016, JPMC filed 7 SARs flagging only $4.3 million in suspicious transactions from Epstein’s accounts.¹ Only after Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges did JPMC report the full extent of Epstein’s suspicious financial activity. In August and September of 2019, JPMC filed two SARs flagging more than 5,000 suspicious wire transfers moving approximately $1.3 billion in and out of Epstein’s accounts.² This is the strongest evidence yet that JPMC should face an investigation for failure to appropriately monitor and report Epstein’s financial activity.

According to internal bank emails, JPMorgan may have held off on filing the SARs (suspicious activity reports) because it wanted “to continue working with Epstein,” who was a great source of referrals despite firing him as a client in 2013, the report found.

The bank said in late October that “it was flagging about 4,700 transactions, totaling more than $1 billion, because they were potentially related to reports of human trafficking involving Mr. Epstein. It also mentioned Mr. Epstein’s wire transfers to Russian banks and sensitivities around “his relationships with two U.S. presidents.” Mr. Epstein at times was close with President Trump and former President Bill Clinton,” according to the NYT.

Wyden said in a statement that it was “clear that JPMorgan Chase ought to face criminal investigation for the way it enabled Epstein’s horrific crimes,” and that both Congress and the DOJ should investigate the bank – which has repeatedly issued statements of regret for working with Epstein, and claims it did all it could with the information it had at the time.

“The second the government finally made public the sex trafficking details in 2019 — information they clearly had for years — we identified for law enforcement a range of Epstein’s past transactions intended to assist with the investigation,” said bank spokeswoman Patricia Wexler on Thursday. 

Will Wyden actually follow the money?

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Newly Declassified FBI Memos Reveal Bureau Ran SECRET ‘J6 Tabletop Exercise’ in Summer 2020 — Planned ‘Mass Prosecutions’ and ‘Embedded Informants’ MONTHS Before Capitol Event

The deep state’s fingerprints are all over the events of January 6, and a newly declassified memo has just blown the lid off the entire operation.

Documents obtained by Just the News and recently turned over to Congress by FBI Director Kash Patel at the request of Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), show the FBI’s Boston Field Office led an internal intelligence assessment warning that “domestic violent extremists (DVEs)” could escalate violence if the 2020 election results were contested.

This wasn’t just a routine drill. It was a blueprint for the very tactics used to hunt down and persecute Trump supporters: undercover informants and “heavy-handed” mass prosecutions for minor offenses, according to the news outlet.

The documents show that while the American public was focused on the 2020 campaign, the FBI’s Boston office was busy conducting a “tabletop exercise” imagining election-related violence.

According to the FBI’s own internal Executive Analytical Report dated August 21, 2020, the Bureau assessed that:

“…Domestic violent extremist (DVE) threats related to the 2020 elections likely will increase as the election approaches… ‘Election-related threats’ include but are not limited to those against candidates, campaign events, presidential conventions… and threats or plots related to electoral outcomes.”

While the bureau looked at “anarchists” on the left, their primary focus, and their eventual implementation, was laser-targeted at the American right.

Perhaps the most stunning revelation is the Bureau’s recommendation to build what it called a “robust source base” embedded within groups deemed capable of post-election violence.

The assessment explicitly recommended embedding Confidential Human Sources (CHS) within potentially violent groups to provide “early detection and disruption of planning for future events.”

This is exactly what played out. We now know, thanks to whistleblower reports and congressional oversight, that there were informants embedded in the crowd on January 6.

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Members of US Congress see the unredacted Epstein files

Members of Congress in Washington DC can now view the millions of documents from the investigation into the Jeffrey Epstein files, without the extensive redactions made by the Justice Department. According to a letter sent to lawmakers they can take notes of the documents, but not make electronic copies. Also: lawyers for Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein, say she will speak fully and honestly about her relationship with the late sex offender, but only if President Trump grants her clemency. The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, has told his MPs that he will not quit after the leader of his party in Scotland called on him to resign. A lawyer at a landmark trial in California has accused the technology giants, Meta and Google, of deliberately making their platforms addictive to children. Australia’s prime minister has defended a visit by the Israeli president, after clashes in Sydney between police and pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Officials at the Winter Olympics in Italy are to investigate why medals keep breaking.

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Pritzker’s “Blind” Trust and $20B in Taxpayer Contracts Raise Waste, Fraud and Abuse Questions

Illinois taxpayers are being asked to believe a fairy tale.

They are told that Gov. JB Pritzker’s massive personal fortune sits inside a “blind trust,” safely sealed off from the decisions of the state government. But the numbers tell a different story – one that is becoming impossible to ignore.

Since Pritzker took office in 2019, companies tied to his blind trust have received more than $20 billion in Illinois state contracts, all paid for with taxpayer money.

That is not blindness. That is precision.

A blind trust is supposed to prevent conflicts of interest, not repeatedly intersect with state spending on a scale that dwarfs most state budgets. Yet under Pritzker, taxpayer-funded contracts continue to flow to companies within his financial orbit – healthcare giants, Medicaid contractors, and corporate entities deeply embedded in Springfield’s lobbying culture.

This is not a one-off coincidence. It is a pattern – and patterns are what expose systems.

Illinois has lived under one-party Democratic rule for years. When competition disappears and oversight weakens, corruption doesn’t need to hide. It operates in plain sight, wrapped in legal language and dismissed as “normal.”

That same pattern extends beyond healthcare and into the Pritzker family’s hospitality empire.

Recent disclosures uncovered show that more than $180 million in taxpayer-funded renovations and upgrades have flowed to the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place since 2011.

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Massie, Khanna spotted 6 individuals ‘likely incriminated’ in unredacted Epstein files

Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said they spotted at least six names of individuals “likely incriminated” by their inclusion in the Epstein files after the two reviewed an unredacted tranche of the documents.

Members of Congress were permitted for the first time Monday to review the unredacted versions of all the Department of Justice (DOJ) files related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Massie and Khanna were the two lead sponsors of the bill that forced the public release of the files.

“There are six men. We went in there for two hours. There’s millions of files, right? And in a couple of hours, we found six men whose names have been redacted, who are implicated in the way that the files are presented,” Massie told reporters outside the Justice Department office where lawmakers can review the files.

The two lawmakers did not name the men but said one is a high-ranking official in a foreign government while another is a prominent individual.

“None of this is designed to be a witch hunt. Just because someone may be in the files doesn’t mean that they’re guilty. But there are very powerful people who raped these underage girls — it wasn’t just Epstein and [his close associate Ghislaine] Maxwell — or showed up to the island or showed up to the ranch or showed up to the home knowing underage girls were being paraded around,” Khanna said.

Massie said he would not be releasing the names himself.

“I think we need to give the DOJ a chance to go back through and correct their mistakes,” he said.

“They need to themselves check their own homework.”

The law that mandated the release of the files allowed for narrow redactions, but lawmakers and victims of Epstein have raised questions about the breadth of what was blacked out and the fact that some names of victims were not.

Massie described an FBI form that listed conspirators in which the Justice Department redacted the name and photo of one of the men who was listed.

The lawmakers also shed light on one email in the latest tranche that garnered significant attention, in which one redacted individual thanked Epstein for a “fun night” and added, “Your littlest girl was a little naughty.” 

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Andrew ‘shared confidential information with Epstein as trade envoy’

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor knowingly shared confidential information with Jeffrey Epstein from his official work as trade envoy in Asia, according to information in the latest release of the Epstein files.

Emails in the files show the former prince passing on secret details of investment opportunities to the convicted paedophile following his visits to Singapore, Hong Kong and Vietnam in 2010 and 2011.

This was after Epstein was first convicted for soliciting a prostitute and procuring a child for prostitution in 2008, for which he was jailed for 18 months.

Trade envoys are legally bound to confidentiality over sensitive, commercial or political information from their visits abroad.

Emails suggest Andrew had told Epstein of his official upcoming trips to Singapore, Vietnam, Shenzhen in China and Hong Kong on October 7, 2010. He was then accompanied by business associates of Epstein on these visits, the BBC reported.

After the trip, he forwarded official reports of the visits to Epstein on November 30, five minutes after he had been sent them by his then special adviser Amit Patel.

In further emails from the files dated Christmas Eve 2010, it appears he sent Epstein a confidential briefing on investment opportunities in the reconstruction of Helmand Province, Afghanistan, which was being managed by the British armed forces and funded by UK government money.

The messages contradict Andrew’s claim that he broke off his friendship with the paedophile in December 2010, which he asserted in his disastrous BBC Newsnight interview in 2019.

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DOJ limits congressional review of Epstein records to publicly released files

Lawmakers set to review unredacted Jeffrey Epstein records at the Justice Department beginning Monday will be allowed to examine only documents that have already been released to the public, not the full universe of Epstein-related materials the department has identified, according to Justice Department correspondence and congressional aides.

In a Jan. 30 letter to Congress, the Justice Department said it identified more than 6 million pages as potentially responsive to the Epstein Files Transparency Act but has released roughly 3.5 million pages in total, including about 3 million pages disclosed last week. The department said the remaining materials were duplicative, non-responsive, privileged, sealed by court order, or otherwise protected from disclosure.

Under the review process announced Friday, members of Congress may view unredacted versions of the publicly released documents in person at Justice Department headquarters. The arrangement does not provide access to materials outside the public release, according to reporting by the Associated Press.

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Secret whistleblower complaint against Tulsi Gabbard finally shared after eight-month standoff

A secret whistleblower complaint against Tulsi Gabbard that had been held in a locked safe has finally been shared with Congress after an eight-month standoff. 

Inspector General Christopher Fox, the intelligence community watchdog, on Monday evening carried by hand the highly classified allegation to a select group of lawmakers, according to CBS News. 

The document was reviewed on a ‘read-and-return’ basis by members and staff of the Gang of Eight, the small bipartisan group who oversee America’s spy agencies. 

The whistleblower complaint filed against the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) by a staffer in May alleged that a highly classified report was deliberately suppressed for political reasons.

The complainant also claimed that an intelligence agency’s legal office failed to refer a potential crime to the Justice Department, also for political reasons.

No other details of the whistleblower complaint were made public as Fox stressed only one previous case required such tightly controlled disclosure to Congress.

Fox told lawmakers in a letter approved for public release on Tuesday that the complaint was ‘administratively closed’ by his predecessor in June and no further action was taken. 

‘If the same or similar matter came before me today, I would likely determine that the allegations do not meet the statutory definition of “urgent concern,”‘ Fox wrote.

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The ultra-secret Disney ranch bought by Walt himself that entertainment giant doesn’t want fans to know about

Hidden in the hills of California sits a 708-acre ranch that the Disney company tries to keep secret from devoted fans who want to peek behind its gates.

The Gold Oak ranch in Placerita Canyon is used as a film set and testing ground for amusement park rides, just about 25 miles north of the company’s largest studio in Burbank.

Unlike the Disney Burbank Studio, the Gold Oak ranch is completely off-limits, lined with no trespassing signs to keep the company’s future plans secret.

‘They go out of their way to limit access because once you open the door, the floodgates just would be unleashed by all the Disney fans,’ Bill Cotter, a former Disney employee, told SFGATE.

The ranch is closely guarded to keep filming hidden, and plans for future rides private, noted the outlet.

While access is off-limits to the public, diehard fans have likely seen inside the mysterious ranch while watching projects such as The Apple Dumpling Gang, The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit, Follow Me, Boys!, and The Parent Trap.

Walt Disney purchased the studio, which was only 315 acres, in 1959 for just $300,000 after spending time there while filming the Spin and Marty serials, the SF Gate noted.

‘The rugged canyons and oak-lined meadows, as well as its proximity to the Studio in Burbank, made the Golden Oak Ranch the perfect place to film Walt’s increasing slate of film and television productions,’ according to the Walt Disney Family Museum.

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Secret whistleblower complaint against Tulsi Gabbard sends shockwaves through DC: ‘Grave damage to national security’

Donald Trump‘s spy chief Tulsi Gabbard is accused of wrongdoing in a whistleblower complaint so highly classified it has been sealed inside a safe.

The sensitive allegations against Gabbard have triggered months of debate over how to present the complaint to Congress, amid warnings it could cause ‘grave damage to national security,’ the Wall Street Journal reports. 

The ‘cloak-and-dagger mystery’ implicates a second government agency, and raises claims of executive privilege that may involve the White House, officials said.

The whistleblower accuses Gabbard of stonewalling the complaint by refusing to provide the necessary security guidance for congressional lawmakers to review it.

The intelligence community’s inspector general received the complaint last May, according to a November letter sent by the whistleblower’s lawyer to Gabbard.

A spokeswoman for Gabbard acknowledged the existence of the complaint but claimed it was ‘baseless and politically motivated.’

Gabbard’s office also said it was not stonewalling the whistleblower’s allegations but navigating a unique set of circumstances in order to resolve the classified complaint.

A representative for the inspector general told the Journal that it had determined some specific allegations were not credible. The whistleblower’s lawyer, Andrew Bakaj, said they were never informed that any determinations were reached.

The November letter Bakaj wrote to Gabbard was shared with House and Senate intelligence panels, but lawmakers have not received the complaint months later. 

Democratic congressional aides on the intelligence committees have tried to probe for details of the complaint in recent weeks but have not been successful.

The information divulged by the whistleblower is so highly classified that not even Bakaj has been able to view it.

Watchdog experts and former intelligence officials claim the delay in sending the complaint to Congress is unprecedented.

The inspector general is usually required to assess whether the complaint is credible to share with lawmakers within three weeks of receiving it.

The Daily Mail cannot confirm the substance of the allegations.

Director of National Intelligence spokeswoman Olivia Coleman said: ‘This is a classic case of a politically motivated individual weaponizing their position in the Intelligence Community, submitting a baseless complaint and then burying it in highly classified information to create 1) false intrigue, 2) a manufactured narrative, and 3) conditions which make it substantially more difficult to produce “security guidance” for transmittal to Congress.’

The controversy comes as Gabbard has been sidelined in the Trump administration over major national security matters, including Venezuela and Iran.

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