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Sen. Ron Wyden accuses CBS takeover by David Ellison of aiding Trump cover-up of Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Big banks also implicated.
Brad Reed at Common Dreams:
Sen. Ron Wyden on Tuesday charged that the takeover of CBS by David Ellison, the son of right-wing billionaire Larry Ellison, helped President Donald Trump’s White House cover up information about the late billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Wyden’s (D-Ore.) claims about CBS came on the same day his office released a report alleging that top Wall Street banks “looked the other way and allowed Epstein to have ready access to the mountains of cash he used to lure, harbor, and transport his victims.”
In a social media post, Wyden revealed that he was interviewed several months ago by former “60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, where he presented evidence his office had gathered about big banks’ role in facilitating Epstein’s illicit activities.
The interview never aired, Wyden said, because CBS “subsequently... pulled the segment and fired the reporter.”
Wyden added that “the MAGA buyout of media has unquestionably aided the Trump administration’s cover up here.”
David Ellison, whose father was a megadonor to Trump’s 2024 campaign, assumed control of CBS last year after his media company Skydance merged with Paramount, the network’s parent company.
Shortly afterward, Ellison hired right-wing commentator Bari Weiss to serve as CBS News’ editor-in-chief, and she has since gone on a firing spree of several longtime “60 Minutes” producers and journalists, including Alfonsi, Scott Pelley, Tanya Simon, and Cecelia Vega.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) revealed that CBS aided and abetted in the Epstein Files cover-up by canning a report that would have aired on CBS’s 60 Minutes highlighting how big banks enabled the late Jeffrey Epstein’s monstrous deeds.
NEW: My staff has confirmed reports that Medicaid portals are down in all 50 states following last night's federal funding freeze. This is a blatant attempt to rip away health insurance from millions of Americans overnight and will get people killed.
"I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sens
"I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems," Sen. Ron Wyden said.
Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency—or DOGE—have been granted access to a sensitive Treasury Department payment system that contains the personal information of every American who receives tax refunds, Medicare, Social Security, and other payments from the government.
Newly approved Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave Musk surrogates access to the system late on Friday, five people familiar with the situation told The New York Times. Bessent's decision came the same day as news that David Lebryk, a career Treasury official who was acting secretary before Bessent's confirmation, would step down after arguing with DOGE members over access to the system run by the Bureau of Fiscal Service that pays out over $6 trillion a year.
"Sources tell my office that Treasury Secretary Bessent has granted DOGE *full* access to this system," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote on social media on Saturday. "Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it."
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich also responded with shock to the news: "An unelected billionaire, with no actual congressional authority or governmentt experience, now has access to Treasury payment systems and sensitive information about millions of Americans who receive Social Security checks, tax refunds, and other payments. What could go wrong?"
The news heightens fears that Musk and the Trump administration are attempting to gain authoritarian control over the federal government by ousting or sidelining career civil servants and undermining Congress, which has the constitutional authority to decide how the government should spend its money.
DOGE gained access to the Treasury payment system on the same day that an official at the Office of Personnel Management said that Musk allies had locked career civil servants out of a computer system containing the personal information of federal employees. The news also capped a week in which the Trump administration attempted to freeze all federal grants and loans, a move that has been temporarily blocked by two judges.
Wyden, the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter demanding answers from Bessent on Friday when reports first emerged that Musk's team had tried to gain access to the system.
"To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy," Wyden wrote. "I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems."
Other Democratic lawmakers also voiced concerns on social media about the news.
"Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth, is rooting around in Social Security and Medicare payment systems. He's reaching his hands into our pockets and firing anyone who tries to stop him. This reeks of corruption—it must stop," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D.-Wash.) wrote.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called the news "alarming" and said that Congress must investigate.
People familiar with the situation told The New York Times that no payments had yet been blocked and that the stated mission of the DOGE team was to review payments, not to stop them. Musk suggested in a social media post on Friday that he was looking for inapropriate expenditures, but also that blocking funds might be appropriate.
"The DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups," he wrote on social media on Friday. "They literally never denied a payment in their entire career. Not even once."
Former Treasury officials told the Times that funds are dispersed by a comparatively small staff who rely on the agencies that earmark the funds to vet them. Don Hammond, who ran the system at the turn of the millennium, also told The Wall Street Journal that, while there were certain automatic safeguards in place, it was not the role of Treasury to approve or reject specific payments.
"Legally, if you want to stop a payment from taking place, the place to do that is at the agency level," Hammond said.
Responding to the article on social media on Sunday, Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens wrote: "The Treasury system makes the payments (cuts checks). It doesn't decide who to pay or how much. A little like an employer using a payroll processor. Musk has infiltrated the system to stop payments. It's a coup."
In an op-ed published by MSNBC on Saturday, Owens went into greater detail about her concerns, outlining three reasons why Musk might want access to the Treasury payment system.
1. He could use it to stop payments to certain programs in order to work around the courts' block on the administration's spending freeze.
2. He could access the list of blacklisted federal contractors in order to boost his own or his friend's companies and harm his competitors. (One of the DOGE allies granted access to the payment system, Tom Krause, is also a Big Tech CEO who leads Cloud Software Group, according to The New York Times.)
3. He could use it to reduce Social Security or Medicare payments as part of DOGE's goal of cutting $2 trillion in federal spending.
Owens noted hat Musk wasn't "chasing these cuts for their own sake. He's helping congressional Republicans attempt to pay for a new round of tax breaks for corporations and the ultrawealthy—including Musk himself."
"It's nice to believe in a fantasy in which Musk and DOGE work alongside civil servants to improve technology and services for Americans and save a few bucks along the way. But all evidence points to the contrary," Owens continued. "The richest man in the world, whom no one elected to any government position, is seeking unprecedented access to confidential information, including information pertaining to his own business interests, and seems hell-bent on cutting off as much funding as possible for the programs that matter to the rest of us."
Owens pointed to a recent poll finding that only around ⅓ of Americans approve of DOGE, and that 52% disapprove of Musk.
"Americans don't want an unelected and unaccountable billionaire dictating what working families can and cannot afford," she concluded. "If Musk is going to continue running the government like one of his failed businesses, perhaps someone should force his 'resignation' too."
As you’ve likely heard, this morning the Senate did one of its semi-regular hearings in which it drags tech CEOs in front of clueless Senato
When you call your senators to oppose KOSA, you can tell them to support the Invest in Children Act instead. It'll actually protect children online instead of just grandstanding and censoring!
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I was intending to take tonight off, but there’s big news—I mean, aside from all the other big news—that I want to make sure gets attention.
Back on February 23, Daniel Ruetenik, Pat Milton, and Cara Tabachnick of CBS News reported on a newly uncovered document in the Epstein files showing that beginning in December 2010 under the Obama administration, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was running an investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and fourteen other people for drug trafficking, prostitution, and money laundering.
The document showed the investigation, called “Chain Reaction,” was still underway in 2015. But the investigation disappeared, although the document suggested that it was a significant investigation and that the government was on the verge of indictments.
As soon as the story broke, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said: “It appears Epstein was involved in criminal activity that went way beyond pedophilia and sex trafficking, which makes it even more outrageous that [Attorney General] Pam Bondi is sitting on several million unreleased files.”
Wyden has been investigating the finances behind Epstein’s criminal sex-trafficking organization: it was his investigation that turned up the information that JPMorgan Chase neglected to report more than $1 billion in suspicious financial transactions linked to Epstein. Wyden has pushed hard for Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to produce the records of those suspicious transactions for the Senate Finance Committee, but Bessent refuses.
On February 25, two days after the story of the DEA investigation broke, Wyden wrote to Terrance C. Cole, administrator of the DEA, noting that “[t]he fact that Epstein was under investigation by the DOJ’s [organized crime drug enforcement] task force suggests that there was ample evidence indicating that Epstein was engaged in heavy drug trafficking and prostitution as part of cross-border criminal conspiracy. This is incredibly disturbing and raises serious questions as to how this investigation by the DEA was handled.”
He noted that Epstein and the fourteen co-conspirators were never charged for drug trafficking or financial crimes, and wrote: “I am concerned that the DEA and DOJ during the first Trump Administration moved to terminate this investigation in order to protect pedophiles.” He also noted that the heavy redactions in the document appear to go far beyond anything authorized by the Epstein Files Transparency Act and that since the document was not classified, “there is no reason to withhold an unredacted version of this document from the U.S. Congress.”
Wyden asked Cole to produce a number of documents by March 13, 2026, including an unredacted copy of the memo in the files, information about what triggered the investigation, what types of drugs Epstein and his fourteen associates were buying or selling, when Operation Chain Reaction concluded and what was its result, why no one was charged, and why the names of the fourteen co-conspirators were redacted.
Today Wyden sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, saying: “It is my understanding that shortly after I requested an unredacted copy” of the document in the Epstein files, the Department of Justice “stepped in to prevent DEA from complying with my request. According to a confidential tip received by my staff, DEA Administrator Terry Cole was ready to provide an unredacted copy of the memorandum, but you stepped in to prevent him from doing so. My staff inquired with the DEA about the status of the production of this document and the DEA responded by directing questions to your office.”
The letter continued: “Your alleged interference in this matter is highly disturbing, not just because it continues the DOJ’s long-running obstruction of my investigation, but also because of your bizarrely favorable treatment of Ghislaine Maxwell, one of Epstein’s closest criminal associates. I should not have to explain the significance of the fact that Epstein was a target of [this high-level DEA] investigation. It suggests the government had ample evidence indicating he was engaged in large scale drug trafficking and prostitution as part of cross-border criminal conspiracy and that Epstein was likely pumping his victims, including underage girls, with incapacitating drugs to facilitate abuse. I am at a loss to understand why you are blocking further investigation of this matter.”
Noting that the document in the files was “clearly marked as ‘unclassified’ at the top of every single page,” Wyden noted: “There is absolutely no reason to withhold an unredacted version of this document from the U.S. Congress.” He added: “In order to assist my investigation into this matter, I demand that you immediately authorize the release of this document.”
Wyden also posted today on social media: “HUGE: Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche—Trump’s former personal lawyer who was also responsible for Ghislaine Maxwell’s transfer to a cushy club fed—has intervened to block the DEA from providing details of a mysterious Epstein investigation to my Finance Committee team…. This is stunning interference. The document I’m after literally says ‘unclassified’ at the top. The investigation it details is closed. Given Blanche’s close personal ties to Donald Trump, this reeks of a continued coverup to protect key names in the Trump administration.”
Wyden’s post echoes the September 13, 2019, letter from then-chair of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff (D-CA) to Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, in which Schiff called out Maguire for illegally withholding a whistleblower complaint.
In that 2019 letter, Schiff warned: “The Committee can only conclude…that the serious misconduct at issue involves the President of the United States and/or other senior White House or Administration officials. This raises grave concerns that your office, together with the Department of Justice and possibly the White House, are engaged in an unlawful effort to protect the President and conceal from the Committee information related to his possible ‘serious or flagrant’ misconduct, abuse of power, or violation of law.”
Schiff was right: the whistleblower had flagged Trump’s July 2019 phone call with newly elected Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, demanding Zelensky smear Joe Biden’s son Hunter before Trump would release the money Congress had appropriated for Ukraine to fight off the Russian invasion that had begun in 2014. That information led to the story that Trump’s White House was running its own secret operation in Ukraine, apart from the State Department, for Trump’s own benefit. That story led to Trump’s first impeachment by the House of Representatives for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Schiff was the lead impeachment manager of the impeachment trial in the Senate, and in his closing argument, he implored Senate Republicans to bring accountability to “a man without character.” “You will not change him. You cannot constrain him. He is who he is. Truth matters little to him. What’s right matters even less, and decency matters not at all.”
“You can’t trust this president to do the right thing. Not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of our country,” Schiff said. “You just can’t. He will not change and you know it.” “A man without character or ethical compass will never find his way.”
But Republican senators stood behind Trump. They acquitted him of abuse of power, by a vote of 48 for conviction to 52 for acquittal. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah crossed the aisle to vote with the Democratic minority. Senate Republicans were unanimous in their vote to acquit Trump of obstruction of Congress.
A good summary of everything people have been doing to resist Trump and Musk. Includes politicians, civil servants, attorneys general, judges, and activists.
"First, the timing of all of this was intentional. It all went down on a Friday night [...] They wanted us to panic for several days and make us feel like we were rudderless and without clear options. But today is the first business day after last Friday’s bombshells, and I can report confidently that the anti-Trump/Musk response is well underway."
Everyone in the US who has a brain and is interested in civil liberties and the shit happening in the shadows to smash them should be paying attention every time Senator Ron Wyden puts any kind of statement out in public. He is probably the most reliable watchdog we've got on the inside and he is meticulous.
In 2011, Wyden said that the U.S. government was relying on a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act, which he said — without disclosing the nature of his concerns — created a “gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says.”
Two years later, then-NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency was relying on its secret interpretation of the Patriot Act to force U.S. phone companies, including Verizon, to turn over the call records of hundreds of millions of Americans on an ongoing basis.
Since then, Wyden has sounded the alarm on how the U.S. government collects the contents of people’s communications; revealed that the Justice Department barred Apple and Google from disclosing that federal authorities had been secretly demanding the contents of their customers’ push notifications; and said that an unclassified report that CISA has refused to release contains “shocking details” about national security threats facing U.S. phone companies.
As noted by Techdirt’s Mike Masnick, we may not know yet why Wyden sounded the siren about the CIA’s activities, but every time Wyden has warned, he has also been vindicated.
