Lawmakers grill former JPMorgan executive Jes Staley over Epstein ties
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said Thursday that the former JPMorgan Chase investment banking chief Jes Staley encouraged the bank to keep Jeffrey Epstein as a client despite internal red flags about the convicted sex offender.
Comer, R-Ky., told CNBC outside of Staley’s closed-door interview with the committee that “it appears that there were flags – red flags – within JPMorgan about Epstein, but it is on the record that Mr. Staley defended Epstein and encouraged JPMorgan to retain him as a client.” “So we have a lot of questions about that.”
Staley served as Epstein’s private banker for more than three decades at JPMorgan and maintained a close personal relationship with him for years.
“Without banks and bankers like Jes Staley, Jeffrey Epstein would not have been able to continue committing these crimes against women,” Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, a member of the oversight committee, said at a news conference Thursday. “He couldn’t keep doing some of the things he was doing. But he was able to do it because of these banks.”
UK regulators cited more than 1,000 emails between the two men; these included messages in which Staley described their friendship as “deep” and referred to Epstein as “family.”
“We have email documentation that shows she solicited and interacted with Jeffrey Epstein in 2010 to purchase women with whom he had sexual intercourse. [the committee hearing] At a press conference on Thursday, another oversight committee member, DN.M. Rep. Melanie Stansbury said she couldn’t remember what happened or how to describe the encounters.
Staley later became CEO of Barclays but resigned in 2021 following a dispute with British regulators over how he described his relationship with Epstein. He later lost an appeal against a decision barring him from the UK financial sector for misleading regulators about these ties.
JPMorgan agreed, without admitting liability, to pay $290 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Epstein victims in 2023 and $75 million to settle a separate lawsuit filed by the U.S. Virgin Islands. The bank later reached a confidential settlement with Staley.
Democrats on the oversight committee said JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s name was not mentioned during questioning.
— Karen James Sloan contributed to this report.
