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Uh oh. Mr. Trump might be sorry that he’s brought such focus to his financials with his DOJ’s IRS get-out-of-paying-taxes agreement. Looks like the media might be circling. Russia. Money. Laundering. All that. ‘Follow the money’ isn’t sexy but it sure is illuminating. Banks misbehaving. Not reporting things they should. Ignoring things they shouldn’t. Because when lots of profit is concerned anything goes. Until you get caught. But if you’re president, or Jeffrey Epstein, the likelihood of that kind of justice is a rare bird. Senator Ron Wyden, who has doggedly followed the money for years with Epstein, has released a report saying that JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Deutsche Bank held off on filing required suspicious activity reports in transactions associated with Jeffrey Epstein. The report, titled “Looking the Other Way: How Wall Street Banks Enabled Jeffrey Epstein’s Sex Trafficking,” came out of a multi-year investigation. Investigators “found significant evidence that JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of America violated anti–money laundering laws by failing to screen and report Epstein’s suspicious financial transactions in a timely manner.” The investigators found that the three banks most closely associated with Epstein put off reporting suspicious activity for years, filing reports of more than $1.4B retroactively only after Epstein was arrested for the second time in 2019 on charges of sex trafficking. The suspicious transactions included “thousands of wire transfers, major withdrawals of cash, payments to women and girls, and correspondent banking in high-risk foreign jurisdictions (including Russia).” “They also include tens of millions in payments to his conspirator and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.” The report concludes that “top executives at major Wall Street banks were aware of Epstein’s suspicious financial activity for years but withheld information from the U.S. government, protecting Epstein from federal scrutiny” as they sought access to his money, which generated millions in fees every year, and to the money of his friends. Senator Wyden called out Republicans for not working with him on this project. He noted that Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) who is currently running for governor, refused to join him in subpoenaing records in the Epstein banking matter. Even as she publicly complained that Democrats were hampering the investigation into those records. The report also pointed out that Republicans have blocked Wyden’s measure that would require the Treasury Department to produce copies of all suspicious activity reports related to Epstein and his co-conspirators for congressional committees. And it singled out Treasury Secretary Bessent for refusing to produce those records to the Senate Finance Committee. Even the pretense of caring about any of these things is going the way of the dodo. We’re watching the dismantling of protections from financial misdeeds, skewing our system toward the very wealthy. Example. On Saturday, Trump began selling access to his social media posts to Wall Street trading firms milliseconds before they go public. This will allow them to buy and sell with insider information. According to reporting,the cost for this access is up to $100,000 a month. So when the party currently in power tells you they care, they don’t. We’re just the suckers P.T. Barnum talked about. Why do we agree to keep falling for it?