HOUSING FOR THE 21ST CENTURY ACT--Motion to Proceed--Continued

HOUSING FOR THE 21ST CENTURY ACT--Motion to Proceed--Continued

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 40 (Tuesday, March 3, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 40 (Tuesday, March 3, 2026)] [Senate] [Pages S748-S751] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] HOUSING FOR THE 21ST CENTURY ACT--Motion to Proceed--Continued The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon. Unanimous Consent Request--S. 2746 Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, late last week, when I first scheduled this consent request that is relating to Jeffrey Epstein's bank records, I was not expecting it to be set against the backdrop of Donald Trump dragging America into yet another war in the Middle East. I will address the horrific crimes and worldwide financial network of Mr. Epstein in a minute. Right at the outset, I need to address the actions of the Trump administration this past weekend. This is a war the American people do not want, a war that has already cost American lives, a war the President and his scheming advisers have not even tried to justify, a war Donald Trump kicked off at his private club minutes before stepping out to celebrate at a glitzy fundraiser where attendees spent $1 million per plate. Now, I remember the debate about the Iraq war 20 years ago, including the bad faith attacks against those of us who opposed it from the start. No doubt there will be a replay of that debate. There will be some who say: War is on. It is time for everybody to line up behind the President and every other issue has got to go by the wayside. That is wrong. It has been clear from the beginning that the core principle for this administration is that Donald Trump gets to do what he wants, no matter the cost, when he wants to. It doesn't matter to him how many American soldiers die as a result of the war. It doesn't matter how many people lose their health insurance or their livelihoods as a result of his policies. And in the case of Mr. Epstein, it doesn't matter how many pedophiles and sex traffickers continue to walk the streets and prey on the vulnerable while the Trump administration hides essential Epstein files from the public. The position of this administration is that Donald Trump can't do anything wrong. He gets to do what he wants, and everybody else has to obey. Ultimately, the American people aren't going to have it. I won't either, and that was the message in my town meetings this past weekend. The last thing that I am going to do is to slow down or walk away from our 4-year investigation into Epstein's trafficking network because Donald Trump decided to kick off another open-ended war in the Middle East. So I am going to take just a few minutes to lay out why the Senate needs to pass my legislation demanding the release of the Epstein bank records that are at the Treasury Department. Here is what Americans needs to know. Four years ago, my investigators on the Finance Committee began digging into the so-called tax planning that Jeffrey Epstein performed for one of the titans of Wall Street. That man was Leon Black. That relationship spawned sprawling financial ties, and Black had a curious story about their relationship. Here was a guy worth billions and billions of dollars, really a money-making machine. He already employed the best tax and estate planning experts in the Nation. [[Page S749]] But over the course of several years, Mr. Black paid Jeffrey Epstein $170 million for what he claimed was tax and estate planning advice. Keep in mind that Jeffrey Epstein wasn't a tax lawyer or an accountant. The rates Black paid him were astronomical compared to what he was paying the experts that he already employed. So my investigators kept digging. What we found and what has been confirmed in more recent Epstein reports is that this story is a sham. Jeffrey Epstein wasn't really doing serious tax and estate work, and Black's lawyers had to keep tabs on the advice he did give, which was often shoddy. Our investigation grew. In late 2023, we reached out to the Biden Treasury Department and sought copies of the bank records that it had on Mr. Epstein. The Biden Treasury Department wouldn't give us the files, but they allowed my investigators to review them in-person and to take notes. That is how I am aware today that there is a massive file of Epstein records at the Treasury Department. These are detailed bank records, a roadmap of Epstein's financial history. In fact, they are filings made by banks specifically to alert Federal law enforcement to suspicious payments--evidence of possible financial crimes. They are designed to help the Treasury investigators in the Justice Department root out crimes like money laundering and trafficking. My investigators reviewed a large portion of them on Valentine's Day 2024. We learned that Jeffrey Epstein made 4,725 wire transfers adding up to more than $1 billion in and out of his JPMorgan bank accounts in the decade after 2003. We learned that he moved hundreds of millions of dollars more through accounts at Bank of New York Mellon and Deutsche Bank. We learned that he used Russian correspondent bank accounts to process hundreds of millions in payments associated with trafficking in Russia and Eastern Europe. In the portion of the Epstein bank records that my investigators saw, there could be more than $1.5 billion in suspicious Epstein transactions laid out for law enforcement to review. Mr. President and colleagues, this is a staggering amount, and it is inexplicably high based on what is currently known about Epstein's sources of income. These Epstein records are not among the files the Justice Department has released over the last few months. The bill Congress passed requiring the release of the DOJ Epstein files doesn't affect the records at the Treasury Department at all. And the kicker, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is hiding these bank records from Senate investigators. The Secretary refused repeatedly to turn them over, and he has refused to let us see what we already know is there. The administration came in with a whole lot of bluster about whether they were going to release the Epstein files. So I wanted to give them a chance to make good on their word. I requested the complete set of files from the Treasury multiple times last spring and summer. Both times, I got denials. Secretary Bessent has even gone out in public and downplayed their significance. He has denied the Treasury has any investigative role with the Epstein files at all. At an appearance last summer, he said the Epstein files were ``sitting there'' at the Treasury Department and that the Department's job was only to ``collect them.'' He said ``there were no files, per se, just hundreds and thousands of reports'' and ``our job is simply to collect the reports.'' Let me be clear on this: Secretary Bessent is not telling the American people the truth. A person with his background in finance absolutely knows perfectly well what the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is all about. That is the law enforcement office within the Treasury Department that collects the bank records. And the Secretary hasn't shied away from getting involved in other investigations. He has the Treasury Department launching all kinds of efforts to help the Trump administration's deportation campaign in Minnesota. So the Secretary wants to have it both ways. When it comes to investigating people in communities the Trump administration considers to be adversaries, the Treasury Department and Mr. Bessent are totally aggressive. When it comes to investigating pedophiles with connections to Donald Trump, the files remain locked away. So let me explain why it is important to break the Bessent hold on these documents. They would help investigators learn who funded and who enabled Epstein. They would help us see where his payments went. They would help us identify any connections to organized crime. They would help us learn more about Epstein's patterns, for example, how he controlled women and girls by controlling their accounts. They would help reveal how Epstein's henchmen, including those who still control his estate, assisted in his crimes. That is the kind of information the Treasury Secretary's stranglehold on these documents is hiding from investigators. We have waited long enough. But a week ago, there was a stunning news report that prompted my decision to come to the Senate floor with the unanimous consent request I will make today. CBS News reported on the existence of a mystery Epstein investigation going back to 2010, an investigation the public knew nothing about until now. It was spearheaded by the Drug Enforcement Administration, and its targets were Epstein and 14 others. It dealt with drug trafficking and money laundering in New York and the Virgin Islands. The existence of this probe was revealed by a long memorandum prepared by one of the law enforcement agencies involved. That is an agency that specialized in breaking up transnational organized crime. Most of the 69-page memo was redacted, but the outlines are there. This was a major investigation that began in 2010 and ran at least into 2015. So now, I am working on obtaining an unredacted copy of this memorandum from the Drug Enforcement Administration. There is no reason for the Trump administration to withhold it. It literally says ``unclassified'' at the top of every page. I have got several other questions about the investigation's conclusion and its findings. One obvious takeaway is that the Senate cannot allow the Treasury Secretary to keep the Epstein bank records hidden any longer. The evidence out in public is clear. This wasn't some small-time operation run by Epstein and Maxwell. It is a miscarriage of justice that they are the only two persons who face prosecution in the United States. Epstein's network spanned the globe. It involved extraordinarily powerful and wealthy people. It involved serious financial crimes and huge flows of money. And now, based on the revelation of a

Referenced legislation: S2746, S2746