Democrats Name for Congressional Probe Into Ties Between Jeffrey Epstein and Peter Thiel

The Jeffrey Epstein scandal continues to plague the Trump administration, and on Wednesday, a outstanding Democratic senator known as for Congress to analyze the monetary ties between the useless intercourse felony and a number of economic organizations and folks, together with tech billionaire Peter Thiel.

A lot of the talk concerning the “Epstein recordsdata” has centered round what information the Justice Division could have on his illicit intercourse crimes however, in response to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), the extra necessary recordsdata may very well be on the Commerce Division, the place proof of the useless financier’s monetary actions appear to attach him to all kinds of rich and influential individuals and establishments.

A type of individuals, in response to Wyden, is Thiel, whose enterprise capital agency is reported to have beforehand taken a big amount of cash from the useless financier. In June, the New York Occasions reported that in 2015 and 2016, not lengthy earlier than his demise, Epstein invested some $40 million with an organization that Thiel had co-founded, Valar Ventures. Like a lot of Thiel’s different firms, Valar takes its title from J.R.R. Tolkien’s mythos.

The information that Thiel’s firm loved a not insignificant relationship with Epstein was fascinating, on condition that, in public, Thiel has tended to talk about Epstein in pretty summary phrases. Whereas Thiel has admitted that he met Epstein a couple of occasions, he has at all times given the impression that he didn’t know him very effectively. Final yr, Thiel went on Joe Rogan’s podcast and spent a major period of time speaking about Epstein, albeit largely to emphasise the useless financier’s ties to plenty of outstanding, left-leaning tech executives—similar to Microsoft mogul Invoice Gates and LinkedIn billionaire Reid Hoffman. He additionally tried to tie Epstein’s crimes to the world of “leftwing philanthropy.”

On Wednesday, Wyden introduced legislation that may pressure the federal government to supply paperwork associated to Epstein’s monetary actions. Wyden’s workplace introduced:

Following new revelations about Jeffrey Epstein’s deep and long-running relationship with J.P Morgan, Senate Finance Committee Rating Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., right now launched the Produce Epstein Treasury Information Act (PETRA) to compel Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to show over Epstein-related Treasury information to Senate investigators. Finance Committee workers reviewed a big portion of these recordsdata in individual on the Treasury Division in 2024. Senator Wyden has sought to acquire the entire set for additional investigation, however Bessent has repeatedly refused to supply them to the committee and downplayed their significance.

Thiel and Valar Ventures are solely two of dozens of individuals and entities that Wyden has urged be investigated over their monetary ties to Epstein. The checklist contains a number of banks (together with outstanding Western ones like HSBC, Citibank, and Wells Fargo, and Russian banks like Alfabank and Sberbank), personal fairness billionaire Leon Black (who, Wyden has repeatedly identified, gave $170 million to Epstein for “tax recommendation,” which the Senator calls “an irregular quantity to pay for tax recommendation”), and Jean-Luc Brunel, a trend trade mannequin scout who in 2022 was, like Epstein, discovered useless in a jail cell, apparently having hanged himself.

On the time of his demise, Brunel was being held on suspicion of getting supplied Epstein with underage ladies. Additionally included on the checklist is Alan Dershowitz, the high-powered lawyer, who previously represented Epstein, and whose title seems within the infamous Epstein “birthday ebook.”

Wyden, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, has spent the final a number of years trying to get the federal government to probe Epstein’s money trails. He started his probe into Epstein’s monetary paperwork in 2022. In June, Wyden wrote to Trump’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi, asking why it had not adopted via on Trump’s marketing campaign promise to be radically clear when it got here to the Epstein recordsdata: “This Administration started with reassuring guarantees that the Epstein case would obtain the eye and diligence it deserves … Quick ahead to the current, the place the launched part of the Epstein recordsdata incorporates little related or groundbreaking data, with some pages fully redacted,” the Senator wrote.

In July, Wyden laid out what he known as a “blueprint” to “follow the money.” This blueprint may very well be utilized by the Justice Division to analyze Epstein’s monetary relationships, he argued. DOJ prosecutors and FBI investigators might begin by probing the Commerce Division’s data on “1000’s of wire transfers and greater than $1 billion {dollars} flowing out and in of Epstein’s accounts, all of which benefit additional investigation.”

The Justice Division has, after all, finished none of this. As a substitute, it recently declared war on “radical gender and racial ideology” in America’s public faculties. Gizmodo reached out to Thiel via his agency Palantir, in addition to to the Commerce Division and the Justice Division.