SCOOP: Senate investigating Peter Thiel’s money ties to Epstein
A bill introduced by Sen. Wyden would require the US Treasury to hand over financial records of Thiel and over 70 other potential co-conspirators under investigation.
A bill introduced Wednesday by US Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) would widen a congressional investigation into the finances behind Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operation to include American oligarch Peter Thiel, as well as known Epstein co-conspirators Nadia Marcinko and Jean-Luc Brunel.
The Produce Epstein Treasury Records Act (PETRA) would require the US Treasury to comply with the US Senate Finance Committee’s investigation into the money trail left by Epstein that connects the disgraced, deceased sex criminal to his clients and financial backers. Similar inquiries by the city of New York, the US Virgin Islands, and Epstein’s victims have led to expensive, hasty lawsuit settlement payouts from billionaires and financial institutions in order to prevent potentially incriminating evidence against them from going public.
The legislation will be introduced as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual budget authorization currently working its way through Congress. Tying the legislation to a bill guaranteed a vote will force every senator to go on the record in their support of — or opposition to — accountability for Epstein’s co-conspirators and justice for his victims.
The Senate Finance Committee’s investigation, which began in 2022, now includes Thiel and his venture capital company Valar Ventures, which took a $40 million investment from Epstein. In total, the investigation now encompasses over 70 co-conspirators and entities “that transacted with Jeffrey Epstein.” The committee’s investigators obtained access to a small number of suspicious transaction reports from the US Treasury under the Biden administration in 2024, but Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent revoked access soon after Trump was inaugurated.
“The basic question here is whether a bunch of rich pedophiles and Epstein accomplices are going to face any consequences for their crimes, and Scott Bessent is doing his best to make sure they won’t,” Wyden said in a statement. “From the beginning, my view has been that following the money is the key to identifying Epstein’s clients as well as the henchmen and banks that enabled his sex trafficking network. It’s past time for Bessent to quit running interference for pedophiles and give us the Epstein files he’s sitting on.”
Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire who believes democracy is a failed experiment, has become inexorably tied to the Trump administration through his surveillance company, Palantir, which has been awarded billions in government contracts this year. This includes $10 billion from the US Army to integrate AI into its processes and $30 million from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to allow the government to track and intimidate immigrants.
The company also seeks to consolidate citizen data across government agencies, a potential violation of the right to privacy guaranteed in the currently eroding Fourth Amendment.
Thiel first landed on Wyden’s radar in June, when it was discovered that Epstein invested in Valar Ventures as part of an attempt to gain Thiel’s favor. An investigation by New York Times reporter Matthew Goldstein confirmed that Thiel is still paying Epstein’s estate dividends from that investment, to the tune of nearly $170 million.
So far, the Treasury has been unwilling to cooperate with Wyden, instead laying blame on former President Joe Biden, who granted the Finance Committee access to certain documents in 2024. Bessent has even gone as far as to lob thinly veiled threats at Wyden if he continues his inquiry.
During an event held by the Young Americans Foundation in August, Bessent simultaneously claimed that the Treasury had no power to investigate financial crimes and threatened to investigate Wyden’s finances, claiming without evidence that the senator engaged in insider trading.
“Any law enforcement person who wants to come and see them, we hold them. Our job — we are not detectives. We collect them. It's just like the — when we make payments, the Treasury, the Commerce Department, tells us to make a payment. We are a paymaster,” Bessent stammered. “Sen. Wyden’s rich. Sen. Wyden, somehow his stock trading account — Sen. Wyden trades better than Paul Pelosi. He was up 125% and then 75%. So, I would — I'm not going to disclose anything because I've never looked, but I would guess there's some stories on Sen. Wyden.”
Republicans on the Committee have been similarly unwilling to aid Wyden in his investigation, blocking requests to issue subpoenas for the documents from the Treasury. Wyden’s PETRA bill is the latest escalation in his attempts to obtain the sensitive financial information needed to uncover any financial ties between Epstein and those who profited from his sex trafficking empire.
The legislation will be introduced as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual budget authorization currently working its way through Congress. Tying the legislation to a bill guaranteed a vote will force every senator to go on the record in their support of — or opposition to — accountability for Epstein’s co-conspirators and justice for his victims.
If passed, PETRA would require the US Treasury to comply with the investigation and give the Committee:
Within 30 days, physical copies of all suspicious activity reports (SARs) submitted on Epstein and his co-conspirators within 30 days
Within 30 days, a report of all financial institutions that submitted SARs about transactions related to Epstein and any of his financial holdings
Within 60 days, details on any investigations conducted by the US Treasury of potential Bank Secrecy Act violations into any accounts tied to Epstein
Bessent has repeatedly attacked Wyden for conducting the investigation and denied any ability for the Treasury to investigate financial crimes. The legislation would force his hand, however, and reveal if Trump had the Treasury conduct a purge of his name from anything related to Epstein, as he instructed the US Department of Justice to do in March.
“My head just about exploded when I heard Bessent say it wasn’t his department’s job to investigate these Epstein bank records,” Wyden said. “It’s simply impossible that somebody with his background in finance is unaware of [Financial Crimes Enforcement Network] or any of the other investigative offices within the Treasury.”
The pressure mounting against Bessent — coupled with a shameless desire to stay in Trump’s good graces —appears to be taking a noticeable toll. Last Wednesday, Bessent freaked out during a social event when he saw an administration colleague he believed was talking negatively about Bessent to Trump. The 62-year-old George Soros protégé and close Thiel associate told 36-year-old Bill Pulte he wanted to take Pulte to the parking lot so Bessent could “fucking beat your ass.” The violent outburst mirrors an April fight between Bessent and Elon Musk over Trump’s pick to run the IRS.
In addition to Wyden’s investigation, the US House Committee on Oversight last month requested that Bessent hand over all relevant suspicious activity reports relating to Epstein as part of its own investigation no later than Sept. 15. The request was made without a subpoena, but Committee members are unusually optimistic that Bessent will comply with their investigation.
The Treasury declined to comment for this story.