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‘A billion dollars’ worth of exceptions’ — Glenn Beck: The REAL Epstein story isn’t the black book, it’s the bank

Jeffrey Epstein’s name is yet again dominating headlines as the American people await a third major handover of Epstein-related documents. President Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law, mandating the Department of Justice’s public release of all unclassified files related to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Once again, everyone’s holding their breath for the flight logs, communications, and investigative records slated for release on December 19, 2025.

But Glenn Beck says “the real story” about Epstein isn’t the clients; it’s “the money.”

Per newly unsealed JPMorgan court documents from a 2023 U.S. Virgin Islands lawsuit, between 2002 and 2019 — despite ending Epstein’s accounts in 2013 amid red flags — JP Morgan Chase filed just seven Suspicious Activity Reports on Epstein. It flagged only $4.3 million, while overlooking roughly 5,000 more suspicious transactions totaling over $1.3 billion, which were linked to potential sex trafficking, massive cash withdrawals, wires to Russian banks, and payments to or from high-profile Epstein associates.

“Let me just say this clearly so nobody really misses the gravity of this,” says Glenn. “You do not accidentally forget to report 5,000 suspicious wires. … You don’t misplace a billion dollars in wires to foreign banks and shell companies connected to a convicted sex offender under federal investigation. It doesn’t happen.”

“It doesn’t happen because a junior banker made a mistake. It doesn’t happen because the compliance officer was sleepy. It doesn’t happen because somebody’s inbox was full. … At a minimum: multiple officers, multiple departments, multiple sign-offs [chose] not to look.”

Why? Because “the bank decided, ‘Well, we want to continue to work with Epstein. He’s valuable; he’s connected; he’s a referral engine to some of the richest people in the world,”’ says Glenn, arguing that somebody turned off the alarm bells on Epstein’s account.

“I’d like to know who turned those off. I’d like to know why they were turned off. I would like to know if it was just the leadership of the bank. I’d like to know that every single one of those bank officers all the way to the top go to prison,” he says.

“If you or I did this — if we had sent just a handful of suspicious wires — the bank would freeze your account, notify the Treasury before you could blink. But Jeffrey Epstein? A billion dollars’ worth of exceptions.”

The most “terrifying question” we should all be asking ourselves right now, Glenn says, is this: “If a bank can look the other way on $1.3 billion for a sex trafficker, what else have the banks learned to ignore?”

“This story isn’t just about Epstein. This is about the machinery that allowed him to operate — all of the middlemen, all of the financial networks, all of the institutions that treated him like an asset instead of a criminal,” he says.

To hear more of Glenn’s analysis and his Epstein theories, watch the clip above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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Poll provides clear idea of who’s poised to sweep 2028 Republican presidential primary

Those keen to wrest control of the GOP from MAGA conservatives and to resume the course charted by the party prior to President Donald Trump’s 2016 election have their work cut out for them.

A new poll conducted by the Saint Anselm College Survey Center at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics revealed that Vice President JD Vance presently towers over his potential 2028 GOP primary opponents — including Calgary-born Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is poised to run as the kind of George W. Bush-era Republican that Trump crushed in the 2016 and 2024 primaries.

‘Voters will sniff out anybody who has seemed to be sort of focused on themselves.’

When asked whom they would vote for if the election were held this month, 57% of respondents said that they would support Vance; 9% said Secretary of State Marco Rubio; 7% said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; 4% said Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy; 4% said former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nimarata “Nikki” Haley; 4% said Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard; 1% said Ted Cruz; and 1% said Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

Two percent of respondents signaled they would vote for someone else, and 10% said they were unsure.

Sources close to the Trump administration recently told Politico that Rubio has telegraphed that he would support Vance if he chooses to run.

One source close to the White House noted that the “expectation is JD as [nominee] and Rubio as VP.”

RELATED: The early social media reviews of Cruz’s 2028 POTUS trial balloon are in

DeSantis, who secured less than 2% of the votes cast in the 2024 Republican primary before dropping out, recently told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “I’m not thinking about anything because I think we have a president now who’s not even been in for a year. We’ve got a lot that we’ve got to accomplish.”

The Florida governor may have taken the advice that James Blair, a former DeSantis staffer who now serves as Trump’s White House deputy chief of staff, recently shared via Politico: “If you’re a Republican that wants to run in 2028 right now, you need to focus on keeping Republicans in power for 2026. I think the number one thing everybody can do is focus on the team and helping their team and not focus on themselves.”

“Voters will sniff out anybody who has seemed to be sort of focused on themselves,” added Blair.

Last month, the University of New Hampshire’s Granite State Poll found that while DeSantis didn’t place in the top five Republican presidential primary candidates for 2028, he managed the fourth-highest favorability rating.

Vance placed first with a favorability rating among likely Republican primary voters of 77%; Rubio placed second with a 58% rating; Gabbard placed third with a 57% rating; DeSantis came fourth with a 56% rating; and Ramaswamy came fifth with 46%.

Cruz and Haley, meanwhile, were much further down the list with favorability ratings of 38% and 25%, respectively.

Gabbard, polling ahead of Cruz in the Saint Anselm College poll, has not made explicit any intention to run but indicated earlier this year on “The Megyn Kelly Show” that she “will never rule out any opportunity” to serve her country.

On the prediction website Polymarket, Vance is given a 55% chance of winning the primary.

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Exclusive interview: DOT Secretary Duffy explains how he’s making flying great again in time for Thanksgiving

Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy ruffled feathers among the professionally offended last week by noting that “traveling has become more uncivilized.”

Duffy cited Federal Aviation Administration data indicating a 400% increase of in-flight outbursts, including physical violence since 2019; 13,800 reported unruly passenger incidents since 2021; and a doubling last year of unruly passenger events compared with 2019.

‘Did people start kind of acting more like animals because they were treated more like animals?’

As part of the Department of Transportation’s broader effort to usher in a “Golden Age of Travel for the American people” — which dovetails with an initiative to beautify and restore key transportation infrastructure — Duffy kicked off a campaign on Wednesday aimed at jump-starting “a nationwide conversation around how we can restore courtesy and class to air travel.”

In an interview with Blaze News editor Christopher Bedford on Monday, Duffy said he’s not necessarily calling for a return to three-piece suits and top hats — just a return to basic decency.

“I think it’s a confluence of things that have come together that have caused people, as they get on airplanes, to be less civil to each other,” Duffy said.

Duffy identified long lines at airports and airlines’ efforts to cram passengers into increasingly smaller spaces as two contributing factors.

According to the advocacy group FlyersRights.org, airline seats have shrunk in recent decades while passengers have largely grown in size, such that as of 2022, “less than 50% of the public can reasonably fit in current seats.”

“The airline is trying to put, you know, a lot of people on an airplane, sell as many tickets as possible, and by doing that, they’re able to reduce the cost of travel and make it affordable for more people,” Duffy said. “But then you feel like you’re cargo.”

RELATED: ‘Disruptive’ woman causes flight with 4 congressmen to divert: ‘We live in a fascist state’

Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images

“Did people start kind of acting more like animals because they were treated more like animals? Or did airline crews have to crack down and treat people like that because of the actions they were seeing?” Bedford asked. “There was an obvious breakdown during COVID.”

Duffy suggested that the transformation of flight attendants into mask-enforcers during the pandemic helped cultivate a more confrontational environment, which — when coupled with disrespect from the airlines and from passengers alike, signaled by the latter with an apparent increase in slovenly dress — helped grease the slide into relative barbarism.

Among the alleged incidents referred by the FAA to the FBI last year were sexual assaults, attacks on fellow passengers and/or flight staff, instances of inappropriate touching of minor fliers, and incidents where passengers attempted to breach the cockpit.

‘I think we can be better.’

While physical violence and inappropriate touching are obvious examples of the behavior the Trump administration seeks to curb in air travel, Duffy noted that incivility finds various forms — such as passengers taking their shoes off and placing them on the seats in front of them, playing movies on high volume without headphones, and touching other fliers’ TV screens with their bare toes.

“I want to have a conversation with America that says, ‘Listen, let’s call our better angels. Let’s all be better when we travel together,'” Duffy told Blaze News.

The DOT secretary emphasized that it’s necessary not only to curb nasty behavior but to embrace good behavior: “Let’s dress more respectfully. Let’s be nicer to one another. Let’s say please and thank you.”

Duffy suggested, for instance, that if capable men see a woman struggling to put her bag into the overhead bin, they should man up and step in to help.

“I think we can be better — better humans, better Americans, better travelers,” the secretary said.

A change in general behavior could make traveling a whole lot less vexatious, not only daily where the TSA’s current volume is roughly 2.48 million souls, but this week — a week where the Transportation Security Administration expects to screen more than 17.8 million people from Nov. 25 to Dec. 2, with over 3 million souls on Sunday alone.

“We are projecting that the Sunday after Thanksgiving will be one of the busiest travel days in TSA history,” Adam Stahl, a senior official at the TSA, said in statement.

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