Jes Staley, the former CEO of Barclays who visited Jeffrey Epstein's private island on his own yacht and admitted to having sex with a member of Epstein's staff, sat down Thursday for a closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee. This is the man Barclays once vouched for to UK regulators, claiming Staley and Epstein 'did not have a close relationship.' The FCA looked at 1,200 emails and concluded the opposite.
The Relationship Barclays Said Wasn't a Relationship
Let's start with the basics. According to The Guardian, Staley first met Epstein in 2000 when he became head of JP Morgan's private bank. Epstein was a client. That relationship continued long after Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to solicitation of prostitution with a minor. Staley visited Epstein while he was serving that sentence and out on work release. He stayed in contact for years after.
In 2015, Staley took his yacht, named the Bequia, to visit Epstein's private island. That was, he claims, their final meeting. That same year, he became CEO of Barclays. The board asked him about his Epstein ties. He played them down. The board believed him. They then told the UK's Financial Conduct Authority that the relationship was 'not close.' The FCA pulled 1,200 emails from JP Morgan's servers and found that it absolutely was.
The FCA concluded the pair were 'indeed close' and had a relationship that 'went beyond one that was professional in nature.' Barclays, now that this has all come out, says it was 'misled by Jes Staley.' Which is true. It is also convenient.
What the Court Hearings Revealed
After the FCA banned Staley from working in UK finance, he challenged the ruling in court. That was a catastrophic decision in the 'more facts came out' sense. During cross-examination, Staley admitted to having sex with a member of Epstein's staff in New York, agreeing with a lawyer that he would describe the encounter as 'consensual.' The Guardian reports that judges sided with the FCA and upheld the ban.
The court battle also cost him £18 million, roughly $24 million, in pay and bonuses from Barclays that he lost as a result of the ruling. His legal challenge, meant to restore his reputation, accomplished the precise opposite.
On top of that, documents released by the US Department of Justice over the past year have intensified scrutiny further. Files reported by The Guardian show that DOJ prosecutors had reviewed allegations of rape and serious bodily harm against a woman by Staley. There is no evidence prosecutors chose to pursue those allegations. Staley has denied any wrongdoing and has never been charged with a crime in connection with them.
JP Morgan Cut Him Loose Too
Barclays is not the only institution with regrets about Jes Staley. The Guardian reports that in March 2023, JPMorgan Chase sued Staley directly, arguing he should be held liable for financial penalties the bank faces from lawsuits accusing it of helping to facilitate Epstein's sex trafficking. JPMorgan, you may recall, was itself the bank that kept Epstein as a client for years and settled its own Epstein lawsuit for $290 million in 2023.
The two sides later reached a confidential settlement. So: no answers, no public accountability, just a check written somewhere and a sealed file. Standard operating procedure for this entire ecosystem.
Elizabeth Warren Wants Answers, and She Sent a Letter to Prove It
Hours before Staley went into his closed-door congressional interview, Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a private letter to Barclays chair Nigel Higgins. The Guardian obtained the letter. Warren, the most senior Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, called out what she described as Barclays's 'apparent failure to meaningfully investigate' the Staley-Epstein relationship.
The letter was co-signed by Congressmen Ro Khanna and Raja Krishnamoorthi, both members of the House Oversight Committee where Staley was testifying. It gave Barclays two weeks to answer a specific set of questions, including whether the bank had reviewed 'deficiencies' in its executive hiring process that 'allowed the board to hire a CEO who held extensive professional and personal ties to a convicted sex offender.'
One particularly sharp detail from the letter: Barclays chair Nigel Higgins admitted during last year's UK court proceedings that he had never actually asked Staley directly about his last contact with Epstein before Higgins told the FCA that the contact had been 'well before' Staley joined the bank. He just took Staley's word for it. 'It appears that neither you nor any other member of the board conducted any deeper due diligence,' the letter said. That is a polite way of saying: you didn't do your jobs.
Warren's letter also carried a not-so-subtle warning, noting that it is a 'privilege' to hold US banking licenses and operate in the American market, where Barclays holds roughly $200 billion in assets. That privilege, the lawmakers wrote, 'is contingent on the ongoing character and fitness of management.' Read the room, Barclays.
Who Else Has Been Through This Room
Staley is the latest but hardly the only name to appear before the House committee's Epstein investigation. The Guardian notes that the panel has already released transcripts or recordings of interviews with Bill and Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, and Goldman Sachs former top lawyer Kathy Ruemmler, whose transcript is also expected to be released soon.
Transcripts of Staley's interview are expected to be made public at a later date. Closed-door first, public reckoning later. That is how this committee has been running it. Whatever Staley said Thursday, Congress will eventually publish it, and the press will eventually read every line.
The Dingo Take
Here is the part that should make everyone angry, regardless of where they sit politically. Jes Staley spent over three decades at JPMorgan, became CEO of one of Britain's biggest banks, and maintained a years-long personal relationship with a convicted pedophile. He visited the man on a private island. He lied to his own board about it. His board then lied to regulators on his behalf, apparently without even bothering to check whether what he told them was true. Nobody asked the obvious follow-up questions. A 1,200-email cache had to do the work that a roomful of highly compensated executives refused to do.
And look, Barclays is out here now saying they were 'misled' like they're the victims in this story. The board chair told the FCA that Staley's last Epstein contact was 'well before' he joined Barclays. He apparently never verified that. That is not being misled. That is choosing not to look. There is a difference, and it matters, and Warren is right to push on it.
The closed-door interview might produce a transcript. The transcript might produce outrage. The outrage might produce nothing. That is the Epstein story in miniature: institution after institution, executive after executive, all of them somehow connected to this man, all of them somehow surprised when the details came out, all of them settling quietly and moving on. Staley lost his CEO job, his UK banking license, and $24 million in bonuses. Jeffrey Epstein's victims lost considerably more. Keep that in the frame.
