It’s hard to believe that international banking giant J.P. Morgan Chase was a facilitator of convicted and now deceased paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, or knowingly conducted ongoing business with him.

As calls grow for the release of the Epstein Files, President Donald Trump has ordered the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement with J.P. Morgan Chase.

“I will be asking [Attorney General] Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffery Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan Chase and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them and him,” wrote President Trump.

It is scurrilous to link J.P. Morgan under the leadership of Jamie Dimon to the unscrupulous and vile behaviour of Epstein.

One is more likely to believe J.P. Morgan’s take on this situation. By President Trump conjoining Epstein and J.P. Morgan, it looks like an attempt to besmirch the venerated banking house’s reputation.

A J.P. Morgan statement on Friday read: “ The Federal Government had damaging information about Epstein’s crimes and failed to share it with J.P. Morgan Chase.

“We regret any association we had with the man but did not help him commit his heinous acts. We ended our relationship with him years before his arrest on sex trafficking charges.”

After Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 death, the bank reported more than US$1 billion in potentially suspicious transactions.

Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has said he regrets his bank doing business with Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaking with CNN’s Erin Burnett earlier this week, Dimon said, “We were in litigation with this. I have no problem with transparency. There’s nothing they are going to learn from me that’s important. We kicked Epstein out in 2013.

“We had been finding suspicious activity reports, which we are not allowed to disclose, but it came out in the courts recently. This was as early as 2002, 2004 and 2008, and the government knew a lot more than we did. I never personally knew him. But what we know, we could have known, should have known-then we get punished. That’s why we debank people.

“The government knew a lot about Epstein, more than JP Morgan did. A lot of the bad stuff happened after we kicked him out in 2013. All this happened under the government’s watch, and tons of people banked him after that- not JP Morgan.

“Yes, you can say we regret it, we were a little late, we coulda, shoulda. Our company would never aid and abet a beast like that,” said the JP Morgan boss.