Jes Staley — "The Most Honest of People"

The banker who ran Epstein's account at JPMorgan told a UK regulator, a college board, and now Congress that he kept the relationship at arm's length after the 2008 conviction. His House Oversight interview, cross-referenced against the document corpus, shows how much he left out.

The interview

On July 24, 2026, James Edward "Jes" Staley sat for a voluntary transcribed interview before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The redacted transcript was released on August 26, 2026. It runs 200 pages. It is now hosted and searchable here, alongside the rest of the corpus: full transcript.

The last exchange is the one to read first. A committee lawyer put Staley's own prior words to him, a statement he had written to the trustees of Bowdoin College: "At no time after his conviction in 2008 did I allow J.E. any connection with any aspects of my professional life." The lawyer answered it with the record: "You asked Mr. Epstein for advice on your salary. You shared confidential information about how your business was doing and what deals you were working on. You told Mr. Epstein about meetings you had with government officials... And you gave Mr. Epstein multiple updates on the hiring process at Barclays" (tr. p.196–197).

Then the final question: "if you were comfortable lying before, how do we know you're not lying to us now?" Staley: "I'm not lying to you." The interview ended at 5:46 p.m. (tr. p.199–200).

That gap, between how Staley has described the relationship to the people with authority over him and what the documents show, is the subject of this report.

What is already known

Much of the Staley story is on the public record. He ran JPMorgan's investment bank and asset management division, left for BlueMountain Capital in 2013, and became CEO of Barclays in December 2015. He resigned as Barclays CEO in 2021. In 2023 the Financial Conduct Authority banned him from holding senior management roles in UK finance and fined him £1.8 million, after finding he had approved a letter to the regulator that "contained misleading statements about the nature of his relationship" with Epstein. The Upper Tribunal upheld the ban in June 2025, reducing the penalty to £1.1 million. JPMorgan separately sued Staley under the "faithless servant" doctrine to recover the compensation it paid him from 2006 to 2013, alleging he failed to report his own conduct and had "misleadingly vouched for Epstein's good character."

The interview itself made news the day it was released. Staley told the committee he shared confidential, market-sensitive bank information with Epstein, including "the bank's communications with the Federal Reserve during the 2008 financial crisis, a figure of US$44 billion in private bank inflows over two weeks, his own compensation, and details of pending deals" (BNN Bloomberg, Aug. 26, 2026).

The interview was voluntary and not conducted under oath, a point House Democrats stressed the day he appeared. One member said there were "clear patterns here that Mr. Staley is conveniently not recalling because he is not under oath" (ABC News). False statements to Congress remain a federal crime.

What follows is the layer under the headlines: the specific documents in the corpus that his answers can be checked against, each one linked to the viewer.

I. The friendship the documents show

Staley told the committee he and Epstein met "weekly," with frequent calls (tr. p.24). The emails in the corpus show what that closeness sounded like, and every one of them postdates Epstein's June 2008 guilty plea.

In August 2008, weeks before Epstein reported to jail, Staley wrote: "I will miss stopping by your office for advice." Epstein replied, "Friends like you, make it easer" (EFTA01299999). In December 2009, Staley wrote: "I realize the danger in sending this email. But it was great to be able, today, to give you, in New York City, a long heartfelt hug. To my friend, Thanks" (EFTA01300356).

On March 5, 2011, Staley wrote the line that gives this report its title. "Deby and I were talking tonight about what you have meant to me and to Alexa. You have paid a price for what has been accused. But we know what u have done for us. And we count you as one of our deepest friends. And most honest of people" (EFTA00905750). Epstein's recorded reply was a single word: "family" (quoted in the JPMorgan litigation filing at EFTA02808649, p.8).

The warmth was not the whole of it. Some of these emails carried business. In November 2009, Staley forwarded Epstein a message about a Dubai sovereign-finance deal, naming officials at the Dubai Department of Finance and the Abu Dhabi crown prince's office, with a one-line instruction: "Please use with discretion" (EFTA02410534). Six years later, in July 2015, while he was preparing to take over Barclays, Staley emailed Epstein, "The CEO wants to meet." Epstein answered, "im home." The message carried JPMorgan's standard footer marking it confidential and potentially "inside information" (EFTA00850787).

Those two emails matter because of the Bowdoin statement. Sharing a live sovereign-finance deal and updates on his own move to Barclays is precisely the "connection with... aspects of my professional life" that Staley told the college board never happened after 2008.

II. What he knew, and when

The most consequential document the committee produced is an internal JPMorgan email chain from July 26, 2006, three days after Epstein's first arrest on a charge of soliciting a minor. Mary Erdoes, then head of the Private Bank, forwarded Staley a colleague's note linking a Palm Beach Post article with the words "It gets worse." Erdoes added, "So painful to read." Staley replied: "I went and saw him last night. I've never seen him so shaken. He also adamantly denies the ages" (EFTA02818597; read into the record at tr. p.119).

The article he was reacting to reported that a college student "gave Epstein a massage in the nude, then brought him six girls, ages 14 to 16," and that Epstein "said he'd pay her to bring him more girls, the younger, the better" (tr. p.119).

Under questioning, Staley characterized his own 2006 email for the record. "I think he denied the ages, which, you know, looking back, is an admission of guilt." Asked whether he believed Epstein could have mistaken a 14-year-old for an adult, Staley said no, then added, "I think I gave him the benefit of the doubt" (tr. p.120).

A year later, in an August 27, 2007 email to Erdoes about a Hamptons concert, Staley wrote that "the age difference between husbands and wifes would have fit in well with Jeffrey. What a joke" (EFTA02811409; tr. p.121). The bank's contemporaneous handling of the account is captured in an internal "Rapid Response Team" record dated October 17, 2006 (EFTA02812987).

This is where the FCA finding lands. The committee told Staley the regulator "doubted you were surprised at the arrest given all of the reports and allegations that you were aware of." Staley disputed the 2006 date but conceded the point for 2010: "in 2010, I would not have been surprised by the allegations... He had pleaded guilty, and he had gone to jail" (tr. p.82–83).

III. Keeping Epstein a client

By 2010 and 2011, JPMorgan's own compliance and legal apparatus was pushing to be rid of Epstein. The corpus records the internal friction. A litigation filing summarizes a July 20, 2011 email in which General Counsel Stephen Cutler wrote to Staley and Erdoes about Epstein (EFTA02822837, p.48), and another notes that on July 31, 2010, Erdoes wrote Staley "largely quoting a NY Post Article" (EFTA02813393, p.21).

Staley's testimony fills in what he did at that moment. He confirmed that when Cutler complained, in October 2011, that Epstein "was not an honorable person in any way, and should not be a client," his own response was to "let the bank do what the bank felt was proper," and to suggest Cutler sit down with Epstein and his lawyers, including Ken Starr, before deciding (tr. p.90). Pressed on why he advocated for that meeting rather than exit, Staley said it "seemed like the thing to do" (tr. p.91). This is the conduct JPMorgan itself later characterized in its third-party complaint, discussed below.

Staley also offered a telling detail about how tightly Epstein was bound to his bankers: "when Epstein moved his accounts ultimately out of Morgan, he followed his banking team to Deutsche Bank" (tr. p.91). On the large cash withdrawals that compliance flagged as a red light, Staley relayed Epstein's explanation without challenge: the cash "were for fuel for his airplane" (tr. p.89–90).

The account recommendation

The clearest single contradiction in the interview happened in real time. Asked about his first interaction with Ghislaine Maxwell, Staley said, "I don't believe I had interaction with Ghislaine Maxwell," and, to whether he had recommended JPMorgan open an account for her, "I don't remember that" (tr. p.23).

The committee then entered an internal JPMorgan report, Bates-stamped EFTA01582859. Under the "Banker Response" column it reads: "Ghislaine Maxwell is a very close friend of Jeffrey Epstein who is an existing client and who has recommended us to her. Jes Staley has also met with her and has recommended we open an account for her." Shown his own recommendation, Staley said only, "I don't [recall]," and confirmed the bank did open Maxwell's account (tr. p.24). The same onboarding file notes that JPMorgan's due-diligence unit had pulled reports on both "Jeffrey Epstein" and "Ghislaine Maxwell," and that "derogatory information was found" on Maxwell.

IV. The island and the properties

Staley gave the committee a specific inventory of his visits. He said he had been to Little Saint James "three times, although one occasion was literally to get on his island into the helicopter and left," had visited Great Saint James, had been to Epstein's Manhattan townhouse "dozens of times," to the 301 East 66th Street apartments once, and to Epstein's New Mexico ranch, Zorro, "once" (tr. p.28–29). He said the substantive island visit was a family trip of "a couple days," plus a lunch, with Epstein present both times (tr. p.130–131).

The corpus corroborates the visits from Staley's own contemporaneous emails. On January 15, 2010, he emailed Epstein, "Arrived at your harbor. Someday, we..." referring to Little Saint James, per the U.S. Virgin Islands complaint (EFTA00145666, p.14). That filing states that "JPMorgan, through senior executive Jes Staley, engaged in multiple visits to Epstein's residence on Little St. James" (EFTA02806178, p.7).

One correction to the record is worth making precisely, because it cuts in Staley's favor. The USVI complaint attached the now-famous November 1, 2009 "hot tub" email ("Presently, I'm in the hot tub with a glass of white wine. This is an amazing place. Truly amazing. Next time we're here together. I owe you so much") to a period when Staley was "presumably visiting Little St. James" (EFTA00768032; EFTA00145666, p.13). Staley told the committee that email was written not on the island but at Zorro Ranch in New Mexico, after he stopped by on a business trip to Albuquerque and went for a horse ride (tr. p.83–84). The corpus does not resolve the location; the testimony and the complaint disagree, and the disagreement is noted here rather than smoothed over.

V. The allegation

This section concerns a sexual-assault allegation against Staley. It is treated as an allegation, because that is its status in the record. No victim is named or described here.

The corpus contains a contemporaneous internal note from the Southern District of New York, dated December 14, 2019: "one of the non/minor Epstein victims alleges that Jes Staley... raped her during a massage. P. 31" (EFTA00029358). The page it points to is in the SDNY co-conspirator prosecution memorandum of December 19, 2019 (EFTA02731082), which the committee entered as an exhibit. As read into the record, the memo describes a survivor, an adult when the events occurred, whom Epstein "instructed... to provide a massage to Jes Staley in Epstein's New York residence," and who told law enforcement that "he forced [redacted] to touch his genitals and then raped [redacted]" (tr. p.58).

Staley's counsel stated on the record that this was "the same woman that testified in the J.P. Morgan case that made a complaint to the New York U.S. attorney which was not found credible." Staley denied the conduct directly: asked whether he ever forced a woman to touch his genitals, or sexually abused, assaulted, or raped a woman in the context of a massage, he answered "No" to each (tr. p.58–59).

Staley's own account, offered earlier in the interview, was that he had one sexual encounter with a member of Epstein's staff, which he described as consensual and as involving "a mature woman" (tr. p.26). He has maintained that this was a relationship between adults and distinct from the assault the survivor alleges. The two accounts describe the same status of the woman as an adult and diverge entirely on consent.

The committee also entered the opinion in the survivors' class action against JPMorgan, which records that plaintiffs alleged Staley "observed JPM Jane Doe 'as a sexual trafficking and abuse victim'" and that he "himself abused some of Epstein's victims," using "aggressive force" and claiming "Epstein's permission" (tr. p.59). Staley denied this as well. A minority member then stated: "we have credible information that you have aggressively, even violently, sexually assaulted multiple women connected to Mr. Epstein" (tr. p.59).

Staley's name also appears on the FBI's "Prominent Names" briefing page, part of a master deck in the corpus (EFTA01660622, p.17). The text on that page was extracted from a garbled scanned layer and is unverified; it should be read as an OCR fragment, not a confirmed finding, until the clean original is examined. The congressional reading guide flags the same document and the same open question the committee pressed: whether the massage allegation was ever investigated, and what happened.

VI. What JPMorgan said about its own executive

The strongest characterization of Staley's conduct in the corpus comes not from a victim or a regulator but from his own former employer. On March 8, 2023, JPMorgan filed a third-party complaint against James Edward Staley for indemnity, contribution, breach of fiduciary duty, and violation of the "faithless servant" doctrine (EFTA02806526). Pleading in the alternative, and without admitting the underlying allegations, the bank recited the claims against Staley: that he "personally spent time with young girls whom he met through Epstein," "personally visited young girls at Epstein's apartments located at 301 East 66th Street," and "personally observed Epstein sexually grab young women" (EFTA02806526, p.6–7).

The U.S. Virgin Islands, in its case against the bank, described Staley without naming him: the trafficking enterprise's approval "at the senior levels of JP Morgan" included "the former chief executive of its asset management division and investment bank, whose inappropriate relationship with Epstein should have been evident to the bank" (EFTA00145666, p.2). A separate filing carries the heading "Epstein Admitted the Conduct (but Not the 'Ages') to Staley" (EFTA02809392, p.1).

VII. What Congress did not ask

The interview ran for hours and covered the abuse allegations, the account, the island, and the cover story. It did not touch a documented thread that sits in plain view in the corpus: Epstein's role advising Staley on Asia.

For five years, across two employers, Staley used Epstein as a confidant on major professional matters in Asia. In December 2009 he floated relocating JPMorgan's investment bank to Singapore (EFTA01300397). In October 2012, in transit between Hong Kong and Singapore, he reported to Epstein on "the events with Lee Kwon Yew," a phonetic rendering of Singapore's founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew (EFTA01765812). Days later, Epstein asked "Island you?" and Staley answered, "Singapore" (EFTA01764918). In July 2014, by then at BlueMountain, he messaged Epstein: "Flying now to Singapore. To bring home the GIC," Singapore's sovereign wealth fund (EFTA01919043). Epstein also gave Staley extensive advice on JPMorgan's China strategy, part of an exchange of roughly 1,200 emails through Staley's JPMorgan account, as reported by Asia Sentinel. The full Singapore thread is documented in the Singapore investigation.

Staley also moved inside Epstein's social apparatus in ways the corpus records elsewhere. He was at a May 2011 dinner with Bill Gates and Larry Summers, and on an April 2011 contact rotation alongside Leon Black and Boris Nikolic, both detailed in the Lutnick and Dubin investigation. In April 2013, Epstein's office scheduled a 7:30 p.m. dinner for Staley with Peter Mandelson, the former UK cabinet minister, per the French Connection investigation (EFTA01899917). None of this was raised.

The characterization gap

Return to where this started. Staley told the FCA one thing about his relationship with Epstein and lost his position at Barclays over the gap between that account and the emails. He told the Bowdoin College trustees he "never had any professional relationship" with Epstein after 2008, a statement the committee walked him through against the salary advice, the deal information, and the Barclays hiring updates in the corpus. He told the committee that he "never" witnessed anything, that he "let the bank do what the bank felt was proper," and that he could not recall recommending Maxwell's account even when shown his own recommendation.

The pattern is the finding. On the specific sexual-assault allegation, the record contains a serious accusation, his flat denial, and his counsel's statement that the complaint "was not found credible." That question remains open. What is not open is the shape of the relationship. A registered sex offender was, for more than a decade after his conviction, one of the most senior people at two global banks' "deepest friends" and "most honest of people," receiving confidential deal information, career counsel, and a defender inside the room when compliance wanted him gone. Staley wrote that description himself, in 2011, to Epstein.

Corroboration scorecard

Timeline

Open items

1. The massage allegation's disposition. The SDNY note (EFTA00029358) points to p.31 of the co-conspirator memo (EFTA02731082). What investigative steps, if any, followed the 2019 complaint, and on what basis it was "not found credible," is not resolved by the corpus.
2. The Zorro Ranch vs. island question for the Nov. 1, 2009 email. Staley's travel records for late October and early November 2009 would settle it.
3. The FBI "Prominent Names" page (EFTA01660622, p.17). The clean, unredacted original would confirm or correct the OCR fragment attributed to Staley.
4. Scale. Staley's name recurs across the production far more than the few dozen documents cited here. A systematic count and full review of every appearance remains to be done.
5. The China-strategy advice. Epstein's reported advice to Staley on JPMorgan's China strategy (Asia Sentinel) is not yet tied to specific corpus documents in this report.

Source key

Transcript: House Oversight transcribed interview of Jes Staley, July 24, 2026, released August 26, 2026, hosted and page-searchable at epstein-data.com/assets/transcripts/staley.pdf.

Primary documents (EFTA corpus, each links to the document viewer):
EFTA00905750,
EFTA02808649,
EFTA02818597,
EFTA02811409,
EFTA02812987,
EFTA01299999,
EFTA01300356,
EFTA02410534,
EFTA00850787,
EFTA01582859,
EFTA00768032,
EFTA00145666,
EFTA02806178,
EFTA02806526,
EFTA02809392,
EFTA02822837,
EFTA02813393,
EFTA00029358,
EFTA02731082,
EFTA01660622,
EFTA01765812,
EFTA01764918,
EFTA01919043,
EFTA01300397,
EFTA01899917.

Related reports on this site:
Singapore investigation,
French Connection investigation,
Lutnick and Dubin investigation,
Congressional reading guide,
Kahn witness brief,
Indyke witness brief.

External reporting:
BNN Bloomberg (Aug. 26, 2026);
ABC News;
FCA — Upper Tribunal upholds Jes Staley ban (2025);
Fortune, JPMorgan sues Staley (Mar. 8, 2023);
Al Jazeera (Jun. 8, 2023);
Asia Sentinel.

Report compiled August 26, 2026, from the House Oversight transcribed interview of July 24, 2026 and the EFTA document corpus. Every EFTA citation links to the document viewer; every transcript citation links to the exact page of the hosted PDF. The sexual-assault allegation is reported as an allegation: it is denied, and Staley's counsel stated on the record that the underlying complaint was "not found credible." Victim identities are protected throughout.