“The reality is he’s claiming first that he had no real friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. I mean that is just ridiculous.” That was Rep. Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, speaking to reporters during a break in Jes Staley’s closed-door appearance on Capitol Hill in July 2026.
Staley, 69, spent more than thirty years at JPMorgan Chase, where he handled ultra-wealthy private clients, Epstein among them. He then ran Barclays from 2015 until he stepped down in 2021. The Financial Conduct Authority later banned him from working in Britain’s financial sector, after finding he had given misleading information about how close the relationship with Epstein was and when it ended.
His House appearance was voluntary and transcribed but not recorded. Not under oath, said Rep. Emily Randall, which is why he could pick and choose what to recall. Rep. Yassamin Ansari accused him of “brazenly lying.” Rep. Melanie Stansbury said Staley confirmed a trip to Florida in 2008 to see Epstein, which he described as a “friendly visit.” “Over and over again, he could not recall,” she said, “but somehow he could magically recall the details.”
Committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican, took the same line. “We know that he was very close friends with Mr. Epstein,” Comer said, adding that JPMorgan staff had flagged Epstein as a high-risk client while Staley kept defending him inside the firm.
What the transcript showed
In late August the committee released the transcript, and The Wall Street Journal pulled out the main points. Staley testified that he visited Epstein’s private island three times and his townhouse dozens of times. He said he had a single encounter around 2010 with a woman on Epstein’s staff, whom he called “a mature woman,” and believed it was consensual.
Investigators then put 2005 flight logs in front of him. They showed Staley and his family flying to the island with Ghislaine Maxwell and “three young women who worked for Mr. Epstein,” arriving Feb. 18 and leaving Feb. 21. He had told the FCA he stayed one night. “I thought it was a single night,” Staley said. “But this implies it was two nights or three nights.”
On the bank’s own worries, he gave ground. Asked whether he had alerted Epstein that JPMorgan was concerned about large cash withdrawals from his accounts, Staley said it was quite possible, and that he thought colleague Mary Erdoes had too. Asked if the bank sat on red flags for years, he answered: “Seems like it.” Shown a 2011 internal email about a “rapid response” meeting on “the HT project,” which the committee said stood for human trafficking, he agreed JPMorgan already suspected Epstein of sex trafficking by early 2011.
The emails with Epstein were harder terrain. “That was fun. Say hi to Snow White,” Staley wrote in July 2010. He told the committee he did not remember meeting the woman and denied having sex with her.
Dimon and the denials
Staley repeated his claim that he twice spoke with JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon about Epstein, once in 2006 after Epstein was indicted and once in 2008 when he went to jail. A JPMorgan spokeswoman said no such conversation ever took place and that Dimon has said under oath he never communicated with Epstein.
JPMorgan settled the victims’ lawsuit in 2023 for $290 million, without admitting wrongdoing. Staley has not been charged and has denied all wrongdoing.
Sources
- Epstein's former private banker appears before House Oversight Committee | ABC News
- Takeaways from Jes Staley's testimony about Epstein | WSJ via Hindustan Times
