Jeffrey Epstein is dead. When alive he was one of Donald Chump's best friends. Some say Chump started the Iran War to distract from The Epstein Scandal. Recently, Melanie publicly stepped into the picture. Sarah Beth Spraggins (THE SPECTATOR) notes:
On April 9, Melania Trump held a lone press conference. She showed up in a charcoal suit, delivered a speech and turned to exit, runway style, without pausing. Melania doesn’t take questions from the press.
The facts, according to Melania: Jeffrey Epstein had not introduced her to Donald Trump. She met her husband, “by chance, at a New York City party, in 1998.” She and her husband were acquainted with Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein, but this was “common in New York City and Palm Beach.” She had engaged Maxwell in polite “casual correspondence” over email. That was the extent of the relationship. “I am not Epstein’s victim,” she said somberly. White House staff were perplexed.
Why had the presser been called? There have been growing rumors that Paolo Zampolli – the modeling agent Melania credits with encouraging her to move to the United States – may have used his ties to the Trumps to have his ex-partner Amanda Ungaro deported.
Ungaro, who was part of President Donald Trump and Melania’s social circle for years, issued a number of angry posts on X directed at the first lady, the president as well as former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. “I will tear down your corrupt system, even if it’s the last thing I do in my life. I will go all the way — I am not afraid. Maybe you should be afraid of what I know … of who you are, and who your husband is,” she said in a post that was dated April 8 and tagged the first lady’s X account. She threatened legal action against the first lady “and your pedophile husband.” To Bondi, she said in a post: “Do you fully understand the information I possess regarding you and the individuals associated with you? I strongly advise you to consider the seriousness of these matters. Any actions taken against me or attempts to escalate this situation could have significant legal consequences.”
[. . .]
Ungaro, in a phone interview from Brazil, confirmed that she posted the remarks on X. She said she felt betrayed by Melania, with whom she had been friends for two decades. She said she had an expired visa and, before her arrest, she had applied for a new one. She said she reached out unsuccessfully to Melania — and then learned that Zampolli was responsible for having her picked up and jailed by ICE. She spent three months in a Miami detention center before she was deported in October. Zampolli, 56, is a former modeling agent who met Ungaro when she was 17. They were together for nearly two decades, and worked as diplomats in the first Trump administration. She was a United Nations ambassador to Grenada, and Zampolli was ambassador to Dominica, both Caribbean nations. He now serves as a special envoy for global partnerships in the Trump administration, and remains close to Trump and the first lady. Zampolli has said that he introduced Trump to Melania. Zampolli, whom Trump also appointed to the Kennedy Center board, reached out to a top ICE official and asked that Ungaro be deported, according to The New York Times. The Times reported that the official, David Venturella, called ICE’s Miami office “to ensure” that agents would pick up Ungaro from jail before she could be given bail. “During the call, Mr. Venturella noted that the case was important to someone close to the White House,” the Times reported. Zampolli told the Times he only reached out to inquire about the process for Ungaro’s deportation. The Miami Herald was unsuccessful in reaching Zampolli through the White House. The White House also did not respond to a request for comments about Ungaro’s allegations.
[. . .]
Ungaro gave an interview last week with the Spanish publication El Pais, where she described the flight she took on Epstein’s plane to the U.S. with her then-agent, Jean-Luc Brunel, and more than a dozen other girls in 2002, just before she turned 17. She declined to tell the Herald what information she has about Epstein or the Trumps, or others associated with them. But she did say she has damaging information.
If her Tweets prompted Melania' public remarks, it will be interesting to see what happens next. Constanza Pérez Z., Hannah Slack, Sebastián Casse, Elías Camhaji and Daniele Grasso (EL PAIS) do a deep dive into The Epstein Files:
The relationships the financier maintained with elites multiplied after his 2008 sentence: in at least 65 cases, their last contact with the magnate came after his prison term. Among others, the tech executive and one-time right-hand man of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, wrote to Epstein in 2012 to coordinate a visit to the island, though Musk says that the trip never came to pass. In 2018 and 2019, Epstein sought advice from the renowned linguist Noam Chomsky, who he had met in 2015, on how to rehabilitate his public image after the abuse charges. “What the vultures dearly want is public response, which then provides a public opening for an onslaught of venomous attacks, many from just publicity seekers or cranks of all sorts,” the philosopher told the magnate.
Some of the relationships lasted for decades. Larry Summers, former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, met Epstein when Summers was the president of Harvard, their friendship blossoming after the financier made a $6.5 million donation to the university. Richard Axel, a Nobel Prize winner in medicine in 2004, resigned from his multiple positions at Columbia University after it came to light that the two had been linked since the 1980s.
Epstein met supermodel Naomi Campbell around 2001, and she invited him to her exclusive 40th birthday party in Cannes in 2010 and sent emails asking to see him in 2015, although her lawyers say that she didn’t know that he had been accused of sexual assault.
Some of the public figures that have been linked to the case say they met the pedophile long before the first allegations against him were made public, like former U.S. president Bill Clinton, who took several trips in Epstein’s private jet between 2002 and 2003. It’s a similar case with Donald Trump, who also appears in the database, met the pedophile in the ‘80s and was a very close friend of his. Trump, who has been implicated in the scandal through photos he took with the multi-millionaire and allegations of abuse that authorities did not follow up on, says that their relationship ended in 2004.
The publication of the Epstein files has led to an avalanche of consequences in more than a dozen countries, which are now investigating whether any of his abuses took place in their territory. Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Turkey, Slovakia and Ireland are among them. At least 16 people related to Epstein have faced some kind of legal consequence, like judicial proceedings and lawsuits. Another 56 have encountered either personal or professional impacts.
In the United Kingdom, the multi-millionaire’s close relationship with the former Prince Andrew — and Andrew’s ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson — created one of the worse crises in the history of the British royal family. Meanwhile, the friendship between the pedophile and Britain’s former ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson, put the Keir Starmer’s administration on the ropes. Two members of the Labour government have even resigned, despite having no connection whatsoever to Epstein: Morgan McSweeney, chief of staff, and Tim Allan, director of communications.
The pedophile’s tentacles also extended to France, where the Paris prosecutor’s office opened an investigation into former Minister of Culture Jack Lang, his daughter Caroline and diplomat Fabrice Aidan, whose case is also being examined by the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Lang was forced to resign as the director of the Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute), a public organization based in Paris, as a result of his relationship with Epstein.
Yes, Chump did meet Epstein in the 80s and began hanging around with him back then. EL PAIS is correct. Too many outlets want to pretend as though it was much later than that; however, the two had a friendship which lasted decades. That lie is not unlike Todd Blanche's lies that there's no evidence to prosecute anyone for the Epstein crimes. Camaron Stevenson (COURIER NEWSROOM) reports:
The total amount paid by financial institutions, royals, and close associates of Jeffrey Epstein to keep their involvement in his international sex trafficking empire out of civil court has now surpassed $1 billion. At the same time, the Trump administration continues to insist there is no evidence to warrant any criminal investigation.
This week, Bank of America began the process of paying $72.5 million to roughly 75 women abused by Epstein, as part of a March 2026 settlement. Like other institutions, it admitted no wrongdoing. The settlement follows similar agreements by competitors JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank, both accused of ignoring Epstein’s blatantly illegal activity because it benefited them financially.
“Rather than merely providing routine banking services to Epstein, Bank of America went far beyond what a non-complicit bank would have done and instead assisted Epstein in setting up the necessary financial structure to operate his sex-trafficking venture,” the lawsuit alleged. “Instead of behaving as an ordinary provider of routine banking services, Bank of America instead assisted Epstein in covering up his past crimes and committing new ones.”
Suspicious Activity Reports filed by banks accused of enabling Epstein’s money laundering and human trafficking are riddled with the names of his alleged accomplices — Darren Indyke, Richard Kahn, Harry Beller, and Lesley Groff, among others. To date, the investigation into Epstein’s multi-billion dollar enterprise has resulted in just two arrests and one conviction.
“So the big misconception is that the Department of Justice or me has ever said ‘case closed,’” acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche told NBC News. “What we have said is that from the information that we have within the Epstein files, we do not have a case against anybody.”
While the DOJ does have an Epstein-related investigation underway, Blanche’s characterization of his department’s inquiry appears to be intentionally misleading. In reality, the DOJ closed its full investigation into Epstein’s sex trafficking operation in July 2025, and opened a narrower one five months later focused on finding ties between Epstein and Trump’s political opponents.
Omitted from the Trump administration’s current investigation are many of the individuals and institutions tied to Epstein’s operation who have collectively paid more than $1 billion to insist they were unaware of his well-documented and highly publicized illicit activity. In each lawsuit, as soon as trial dates were set, defendants moved quickly to instead settle for a hefty sum.
Litigation against major banks snowballed over time, after the $150 million fine given to Deutsche Bank in 2020 set the precedent for a successful case. Since then, victims have pursued cases one by one, securing settlements from Deutsche Bank in 2023, JPMorgan in 2024, and Bank of America in 2026. A separate lawsuit filed in October 2025 against Bank of New York Mellon, another longtime financial institution of Epstein’s, is ongoing.
Todd Blanche appears unwilling or unable to do his job a acting Attorney General. That job also involves public apologies to those that the Justice Dept screws over. Chelsie Napiza (INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES) reports:
Epstein survivor Juliette Bryant has publicly accused the US Department of Justice of publishing an alleged nude photograph of her, taken by Jeffrey Epstein without her consent, as part of its mass release of files from the convicted sex offender's investigation.
In a post to X on 17 April 2026, Bryant, who says she was trafficked by Epstein from South Africa in 2002, wrote: 'DOJ! SHARING NAKED PHOTOS OF ME THAT I HAVE NEVER SEEN. TAKEN BY EPSTEIN. DOJ IS SUPPOSED TO PROTECT VICTIMS NOT HURT THEM.'
Bryant, who was compensated through the Epstein Victims' Compensation Programme in 2020 and reached a separate settlement with JP Morgan Chase in 2023, has been one of the most publicly visible survivors throughout the file release process. Her latest allegation is among the most direct: that the agency tasked with delivering justice for Epstein's victims has itself become an instrument of their further violation.
Juliette Bryant is only one person that Blanche owes an apology to. And an explanation. Every page released was supposed to have been vetted. But somehow they released a new photo of one of the survivors? Blanche is acting Attorney General, he should be making a public apology.
He won't. He couldn't even own the 'mix up' when the Justice Dept refused to release statements on three interviews they had with Jane Doe who accused Chump of assault when she was a teenager. Marilyn W. Thompson and Mitchell Black (POST & COURIER) report:
The FBI had a heads-up that the former Hilton Head woman might have explosive charges. On July 8, 2019, a call came into a tip line the FBI set up after arresting Epstein on sex trafficking charges. William F. Sweeney Jr., then the assistant director-in-charge of the FBI’s New York field office, had urged women who believed they were Epstein’s victims to call.
One person reported that she had knowledge of a friend who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by both Epstein and Trump as a teenager after randomly meeting Epstein on Hilton Head. The tipster’s call was logged into FBI files, and records of it were later made public in such a way that the caller’s identity was exposed.
An FBI internal memo circulated last year included notes that used the caller’s first name and indicated that she had been charged in a criminal case in South Carolina. The Post and Courier discovered her full name by reviewing the archived case, which had been dismissed. She has declined to speak to The Post and Courier.
The DOJ has said it corrected any errors as soon as it learned of them, and it eventually redacted the caller’s first name.
The alleged victim then called the hotline two days later on July 10, 2019, records show.
An FBI employee recorded her initial tip and sent a file to the Seattle Field Office, asking agents there to interview the woman. Referring cases to field offices was common as calls poured in, saving time and money from having agents fly around the country, according to former FBI agents.
The downside was that field agents were not as familiar with the Epstein investigation, which was based in New York and involved a dedicated team of prosecutors and FBI agents. Investigators there had interviewed dozens of potential witnesses and resurrected files from Epstein’s state conviction in Florida in 2008 for soliciting prostitution of a minor.
The employee referring the case to Seattle asked agents to contact the Epstein team before arranging a sit-down interview. It is unclear if they did so.
Seattle agents conducted their first interview on July 24, 2019. The alleged victim discussed how Epstein lured her to a villa at Sea Pines resort for a babysitting gig, and then plied her with drugs and alcohol before repeatedly abusing her. The victim ended the interview without describing her alleged encounter with Trump.
Within the coming weeks, agents formalized handwritten notes into an interview summary. As is standard practice, that report offered no opinions about her credibility.
Donald Chump was Epstein's friend and Ghislaine Maxwell's friend. That's why Todd Blanche met with Maxwell last summer and why Ghislaine was moved to a Club Fed type prison. Maxwell is planning her release, waiting for it. At THE NEW HAMPSHIRE UNION LEADER, Rachel Cohen notes:
David Oscar Markus, an attorney for Ghislaine Maxwell, plans to eventually ask President Donald Trump to pardon her.
In an interview with Politico released Friday, Markus said it is “no secret” that Maxwell — the only convicted co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein — “obviously wants clemency.” But he acknowledged that he does not believe “now is the best time to do it, with everything going on,” appearing to reference how the Department of Justice’s handling of files tied to the late convicted sex offender continues to remain a major news story.
Turning to the effects of Chump's war of choice on Iran, Rebecca F. Elliott and Joe Rennison (NEW YORK TIMES) report:
Oil prices shot higher and stocks sank on Sunday evening after a weekend of renewed conflict around the Strait of Hormuz dampened hope that the waterway might soon reopen.
Earlier on Sunday, a U.S. Navy destroyer attacked and seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship that President Trump said had tried to evade the U.S. blockade on ships traveling to and from Iranian ports. And on Saturday, a day after Iran’s foreign minister declared the strait open, the country reversed course, reasserting “strict control” over it and attacking two Indian-flagged vessels.
All of that happened after markets closed on Friday, meaning traders are only now digesting those developments.
And though Chump repeatedly claims prices will be back to normal shortly, another member of his administration says differently. Minho Kim and Tim Balk (NEW YORK TIMES) report:
Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said on Sunday that gasoline prices in the United States had probably peaked but acknowledged that they could remain elevated for months, undermining President Trump’s earlier claim that high fuel prices would be “short-term.”
Mr. Wright had said in early March that the average gas price in the United States would fall below $3 a gallon within “weeks” after President Trump and Israel initiated airstrikes against Iran in late February. But on Sunday, Mr. Wright appeared to backtrack in an appearance on the CNN program “State of the Union” after the host, Jake Tapper, asked him when it would be “realistic” for Americans to see $3 per gallon prices at the pump.
“I don’t know,” Mr. Wright said. “That could happen later this year. That might not happen until next year. But prices have likely peaked.”
When asked again if he meant that gas prices might not return to prewar levels until 2027, Mr. Wright suggested that such price levels were “pretty tremendous” after accounting for inflation.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Adam Schiff's office:
Administration decision follows years of litigation involving allegations that Halkbank knowingly participated in a scheme to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran.
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) led Senators in probing the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) decision to dismiss criminal charges against Turkish bank Halkbank for illegally helping Iran conceal billions of dollars while providing a financial lifeline for Iran’s support of terrorism around the world.
In their inquiry, the Senators are seeking answers as to whether the agency was pressured by President Trump or other senior administration officials to resolve this case, why Halkbank has no legal obligation to make any payments under this settlement after it evaded U.S. sanctions, how the DOJ will ensure the bank no longer launders money to Iran, and the devastating impact of this decision on U.S. victims of state-sponsored terrorism and on future sanctions and anti-corruption laws with other foreign governments.
“The timing of this agreement, coinciding with President Trump’s initiation of a war against Iran that he justified in part by citing Iran’s history of terrorist attacks against U.S. citizens, makes the Department’s decision even more incomprehensible. We also note President Trump’s and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s personal, financial, and familial interests in ending the prosecution,” the Senators wrote.
Since 2019, the DOJ accused Halkbank of illegally helping Iran create a slush fund of more than $20 billion through transactions, dating back to 2012, designed to evade U.S. sanctions and mislead regulators. Last month, the DOJ agreed to a settlement that includes no admission of liability by Halkbank, no fines or penalties, and no compensation for U.S. victims of state-sponsored terrorism.
“The sanctions evasion scheme, involving billions of dollars, was a critical financial lifeline for the Iranian regime during the same years it carried out wide-scale global terrorist activities, which included the kidnapping, torture, and murder of Americans. As the government’s own attorneys noted in the sentencing memorandum for criminal co-defendant Atilla, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of these illicit financial transactions were processed by U.S. banks,” the Senators continued.
This letter was also signed by Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.).
Read the full letter here and below:
Dear Acting Attorney General Blanche:
We write to seek information on the troubling and confusing decision by the Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York to enter into a settlement agreement with Türkiye Halk Bankasi (“Halkbank”) that discards years of prosecutorial efforts to prevent illegal funding of Iran’s government. Since 2019, the Department of Justice (“Department”) has alleged that Halkbank illegally helped Iran create a slush fund of more than $20 billion through transactions, dating back to 2012, designed to evade U.S. sanctions and mislead U.S. regulators. Now, the Department has agreed to a settlement that includes no admissions of responsibility by Halkbank, not a single dollar of fines or penalties, and no compensation for U.S. victims of state-sponsored terrorism. In contrast, every other publicly announced deferred prosecution agreement by this Administration has included millions of dollars in fines or forfeiture, except when the defendant could show an inability to pay.
The timing of this agreement, coinciding with President Trump’s initiation of a war against Iran that he justified in part by citing Iran’s history of terrorist attacks against U.S. citizens, makes the Department’s decision even more incomprehensible. We also note President Trump’s and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s personal, financial, and familial interests in ending the prosecution.
As you know, the Department’s decision to dismiss the charges comes after years of litigation involving allegations that Halkbank knowingly participated in a scheme to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran. In 2019, federal prosecutors, including Emil Bove, charged the bank with fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy for allegedly helping Iran access the global financial system through money servicers and front companies operating in Iran, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. According to the indictment, Halkbank, primarily through senior executives Mehmet Hakan Atilla, Levent Balkan, and Suleyman Aslan, knowingly engaged in a scheme of fraudulent transactions intended to deceive U.S. regulators and foreign banks, and mislead U.S. officials. Prosecutors also alleged that high-ranking officials in Iran and Turkey participated in and protected this scheme, with some receiving bribes worth tens of millions of dollars from the scheme. The scheme allegedly relied on accounts at Halkbank that were held in the names of the Central Bank of Iran, the National Iranian Oil Company, and the National Iranian Gas Company, containing proceeds from Iranian oil and gas sales to Turkey.
Because U.S. sanctions and anti-money laundering restrictions limited Iran’s ability to access these funds, Halkbank purportedly used gold purchases, front companies, and sham humanitarian aid to move funds for Iranian government entities while concealing the Iranian connection from the United States. The sanctions evasion scheme, involving billions of dollars, was a critical financial lifeline for the Iranian regime during the same years it carried out wide-scale global terrorist activities, which included the kidnapping, torture, and murder of Americans. As the government’s own attorneys noted in the sentencing memorandum for criminal co-defendant Atilla, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of these illicit financial transactions were processed by U.S. banks.
These allegations are not simply unproven charges. The Department has already convicted two individuals for their actions in the sanctions evasion scheme, which a federal prosecutor told the presiding judge was “massive” in scope and “the biggest sanctions evasion case prosecuted in the United States that we’re aware of.” During the Biden Administration, the Department continued the prosecutions and considered this case significant enough to litigate Halkbank’s claims of sovereign immunity all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court rejected Halkbank’s immunity claim and, in May 2025, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a second argument that Halkbank could be immune from prosecution for criminal conduct.
Now, the Department has determined that Halkbank need not take responsibility for its criminal conduct. On March 6, 2026, the Department entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with Halkbank, agreeing to dismiss the longstanding indictment without the company paying a single dollar in fines, forfeiture, or restitution. To get the charges dismissed, Halkbank will merely pay an expert to review its current sanctions and anti-money laundering compliance programs and agree to avoid transactions involving Iran through the U.S. financial system, which is hardly a concession considering such transactions are already illegal.
If Halkbank then submits a compliance report that the Department deems to be sufficient, the government will then dismiss the indictment with prejudice, papering over a massive criminal scheme while ensuring that none of the proceeds will go to the American victims of Iranian statesponsored terrorism.
The Department’s decision here is particularly troubling given the national security interests implicated. The Department justified its deferred prosecution agreement by citing “unique and extraordinary” foreign policy considerations and ongoing diplomatic negotiations. While the government claims that Turkey was involved in securing the return of the October 7, 2023, hostages from Hamas, the living hostages have now returned to their families, casting doubt on this foreign policy motivation.
As to additional policy considerations, Halkbank is majority-owned by Turkey’s state-owned wealth fund and therefore an instrumentality of a foreign state. This carries the uncomfortable implication that support for Iranian state-sponsored acts of terrorism in Turkey is not confined to a rogue private institution but is state-sanctioned. By deferring this case rather than dismissing it, the Department is in effect arguing both that the Government of Turkey was involved in facilitating Iranian support to terrorist organizations—which funded the Hamas leadership responsible for the October 7 attacks against Israel, notably also resulting in the death of 46 Americans—and also is providing key assistance to the U.S. Government to bring about an end of the ensuing war. This is an untenable position; we must strengthen, rather than undermine, our sanctions regime and opposition to Iran’s state-sponsored terrorism.
Most galling, this toothless settlement with Halkbank overturns the professional judgment of former Department officials to satisfy President Trump’s personal agenda. Prior reporting notes that Erdoğan had family members and government ministers who were potentially liable under the prosecution and that President Trump had personal business dealings in Turkey including at least $2.6 million in income tied to operations in Turkey between 2015 and 2018. Following Erdoğan’s visit to the White House in September 2025, Erdoğan reportedly raised the Halkbank prosecution with President Trump, who assured him that “the Halkbank problem is over for us.” The current resolution follows years of Turkey pressuring President Trump, who then, in turn, pressured the Department to make the case go away. As a result, the outcome here is even worse than what then-Attorney General William Barr proposed in 2020, which was to settle the multibillion-dollar sanctions scheme with a criminal fine and admission of wrongdoing, a plan that did not stick because of the efforts of then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman. Berman resisted pressure from Barr and other senior Department officials, including then-Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, to agree to a resolution he considered insufficient. President Trump ordered Berman’s removal in June 2020 and installed leadership more receptive to his personal and political priorities.
Finally, the Department’s decision not to prosecute Halkbank also raises concerns about justice for American victims of state-sponsored terrorism. Department policy has long prioritized recovering funds for victims. Under the Criminal Division’s new Corporate Enforcement Policy announced on March 10, 2026, a company with a declined prosecution is “required to pay all disgorgement forfeiture as well as restitution/victim compensation payments resulting from the misconduct.” This policy is a sharp contrast to the Halkbank settlement, which provides no money at all. Such monetary penalties recovered in sanctions and terrorism-related cases do not have a solely punitive purpose. Crucially, financial fines and penalties in sanctions cases also support victim compensation through mechanisms such as the U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund. These funds are often one of the only ways for victims of state-sponsored terrorism and their families to be compensated for severe and lifelong harm, particularly given the impossibility of directly recovering against the assets of state sponsors of terrorism. According to a report by the Government Accountability Office, that Fund’s balance has been declining due to “lower deposits from civil and criminal penalties, fines and forfeitures.” A resolution that forgoes financial penalties further limits the already scarce resources available to those victims, many of whom have already faced significant barriers to recovery. In fact, ahead of the court’s ruling, over 400 victims of state-sponsored terrorism expressed their concern for the Department’s agreement, highlighting its lack of financial penalty in an impact statement to Judge Berman. As they wrote, “the government is essentially redirecting resources that were statutorily intended for the victims of the very terrorism the sanctions were designed to thwart.”
Considering the significant national security, foreign policy, and justice-related concerns posed by your ending the prosecution of Halkbank, as well as concern about the Department’s broader commitment to enforcing sanctions laws designed to protect U.S. national security, we request answers to the following questions by no later than April 30, 2026:
- Unlike a typical deferred prosecution agreement with a term of several years, the Halkbank settlement does not include any clear statement of when the agreement will expire such that the government would dismiss charges. How long do you expect Halkbank to show its ongoing compliance with sanctions laws?
- Please detail the Department’s assessment of how the funds laundered through Halkbank were used by Iran or its proxies, including any portion that supported acts of terrorism against Americans. What methodology did the Department use to determine the extent of this connection?
- Was dismissing the Halkbank prosecution a condition of Turkey’s assistance in Gaza, and if so, what was the potential financial value to the Turkish government?
- Given that the Halkbank resolution includes no fine, forfeiture, or restitution, please explain how the Department intends to ensure consistent and meaningful compensation for victims of state-sponsored terrorism through the U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund, which relies on deposits from sanctions-related cases. What alternative funding mechanisms did the Department identify?”
- How will the use of an independent and expert evaluation for Halkbank further national security interests through “combatting money laundering and terror finance?”
- Is the Department concerned about whether dismissing this case will signal to foreign financial institutions, foreign governments, and other perpetuators of fraud that they can undermine our sanctions and anti-corruption laws so long as they please President Trump?
- Please explain how the Department assessed the potential impact of this resolution on future deterrence of sanctions evasion and the enforcement of U.S. sanction laws.
- Considering that U.S. troops are currently engaged in a war in Iran, how will the Department guarantee that Halkbank is no longer laundering funds that could fund the Iranian regime’s war effort?
- Did the Department receive guidance, directly or indirectly,
from the president or other political officials regarding the resolution
of this case?
- Were any communications made between the White House and the Department of Justice regarding Halkbank in the period leading up to the resolution?
- If a foreign head of state is alleged to have had some influence on the resolution of a case, how does the Department ensure thorough investigation of this influence and prosecutorial independence?
- At the time of the agreement was the Department aware of President Erdoğan’s political and familial ties to individuals who would be potentially liable under the prosecution?
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