Lawyers for a Jeffrey Epstein victim suing JPMorgan Chase & Co. over its ties to the disgraced financier are asking the judge to recall Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon as well as top executive Mary Erdoes for fresh depositions.
In a letter filed in federal court in Manhattan on Friday, the Jane Doe victim’s lawyer Sigrid McCawley said JPMorgan produced an important document in discovery after Dimon was deposed on May 26, so they weren’t able to question him about it.
“Needless to say, the late-produced document is one of the most relevant and responsive documents produced to date, and JPMC strategically withheld it from Plaintiff until she could no longer make meaningful use of it in examining JPMC’s employees,” McCawley wrote.
Doe’s suit alleges JPMorgan knowingly benefited from Epstein’s sex-trafficking. At his deposition, Dimon steadfastly denied playing any role in the decision to retain Epstein as a bank client between 1998 and 2013. The CEO said he never met with Epstein or even knew who we was until news reports about his 2019 arrest on federal sex-trafficking charges.
In a statement Friday, a JPMorgan spokesperson said “no amount of time on the record will change the fact that Jamie never met the man, never worked with the man, and wishes in hindsight the man had never been a client of the firm.”
Read More: Dimon Testified JPMorgan Epstein Ties Decided by Erdoes, Cutler
McCawley said in her letter that key documents produced after the deposition relate to a review of internal communications about Epstein after his arrest and subsequent jail-cell death.
Details of the documents are redacted in the letter, though it appears to involve emails between former JPMorgan executive Jes Staley and Epstein. McCawley writes that the documents demonstrated the bank could have learned the full extent of Epstein and Staley’s personal relationship prior to his death and the ensuing media coverage.
Doe’s lawyers want to question Dimon about the 2019 review and what it revealed about Epstein and Staley’s relationship. Staley is not a defendant in either Doe’s suit or a separate one by the US Virgin Islands, but both plaintiffs allege that Staley knew of Epstein’s sex-trafficking and argued that his knowledge should be imputed to the bank.
JPMorgan is suing Staley to hold him responsible for any liability it faces, claiming he misled the bank into keeping Epstein as a client. Staley, who is being deposed in the litigation this weekend, has denied both JPMorgan and the plaintiffs’ allegations.
Read More: Ex-Barclays CEO Jes Staley Set to Appear for Epstein Deposition
The plaintiff’s legal team are also seeking to further question Erdoes, JPMorgan’s Asset and Wealth Management CEO, who was deposed in March.
Since Erdoes’s deposition on March 15, the bank has turned over almost 500 documents to the plaintiff’s lawyers, the letter states. Among the material is a 2012 email exchange between Erdoes and another “high-ranking JPMC employee”. The contents of the email are redacted but provides context to understand the various emails between Epstein and her, the letter outlines.
“Jane Doe is entitled to additional time to question Erdoes concerning her relationship with Epstein,” McCawley wrote.
In his deposition, Dimon said Erdoes and former JPMorgan General Counsel Stephen Cutler would have had the authority to terminate Epstein as a client.
The case is Jane Doe 1 v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, 22-cv-10019, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
(Updates with comment from JPMorgan, detail from filing.)
Author: Ava Benny-Morrison