NEED TO KNOW
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Sharyn Alfonsi was working on a story about Jeffrey Epstein’s banking ties two months before she was fired, according to a new report released by Sen. Ron Wyden
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In his report, Wyden claimed Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America enabled Epstein’s suspicious financial transactions
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Alfonsi was recently appointed as a journalist in residence at Columbia Journalism School for the 2026–27 academic year
Before Sharyn Alfonsi was fired from60 Minutes, the journalist worked on a story about Jeffrey Epstein‘s banking practices that never made it to air.
On Tuesday, Aug. 4, Sen. Ron Wyden released a report claiming that Deutsche Bank AG failed to timely disclose to U.S. authorities that more than $250 million in suspicious transactions were tied to the disgraced financier and child sex offender.
JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America were also accused of enabling Epstein in the Oregon Democrat’s report, Bloomberg reported.
Reps for Deutsche Bank AG, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
“We take our legal and regulatory responsibilities seriously and, as we have previously said, the bank did not facilitate wrongdoing,” Bank of America spokesperson Abbey Collins told Bloomberg. Deutsche Bank AG declined to comment to the outlet.
JPMorgan told Bloomberg it began reporting suspicious transactions with Epstein to regulators in 2002 and augmented its filings “after the full scope of his crimes became public in 2019.”
Some of the money was used to pay women in Russia and Eastern Europe
Wyden’s report also revealed that Alfonsi, 54, was working with him on a segment about the relationship between Epstein, banks on Wall Street, and the U.S. Virgin Islands government.
In May, Alfonsi was fired. Since then, neither her interview with Wyden nor her reporting on Epstein have aired.
“We are proud of our aggressive and extensive reporting on the Epstein scandal. That reporting continues. We air pieces when they are ready and suggesting that an interview is being ‘suppressed’ for any reason is categorically false,” a spokesperson for CBS News tells PEOPLE.
CBS News has published several exclusive and original reports and investigations related to the Epstein scandal, including an exclusive investigation in July that detailed how he negotiated a $25 million payout for himself through his global banking network.
The network also interviewed survivors and aired original reporting surrounding his suspicious death.
Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on accusations that he sexually abused girls as young as 14 years old.
While awaiting trial, he died by suicide on Aug. 10, 2019, in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York. Years later, documents often referred to as the “Epstein files” continue to be released, shedding light on his crimes.
Alfonsi’s firing from CBS was unrelated to her Epstein coverage, and came after she spoke out against CBS News’ editor-in-chief Bari Weiss after Weiss abruptly pulled Alfonsi’s 60 Minutes segment on CECOT, the notorious El Salvador prison where Venezuelan men were deported by the Trump administration.
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“It sends a chilling message to the entire newsroom,” Alfonsi said at the time. “I think it was a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize accurate reporting.”
On Monday, Aug. 3, Alfonsi was appointed as a journalist in residence at the Columbia Journalism School for the 2026–27 academic year, where she will work directly with journalism students both together and separately through “lectures, workshops and special events,” per the school.
Read the original article on People
