EXHIBIT 142¶
1 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK 2 - - -¶
3 GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED : Case Number:¶
STATES VIRGIN ISLANDS : 1:22-cv-4 Plaintiff, : 10904-JSR¶
5 JPMORGAN CHASE BANK, N.A. Defendant/Third-Party 6 Plaintiff.¶
7 JPMORGAN CHASE BANK, N.A. Third-Party Plaintiff, : 8¶
JAMES EDWARD STALEY 9 Third-Party Defendant. :¶
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11 MAY 24, 2023 HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL 12¶
Videotaped deposition of STEPHEN CUTLER, taken pursuant to notice, was held at the law offices of Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, 55 Hudson Yards, New York, New York, commencing at 9:40 a.m., on the above date, before Amanda Dee Maslynsky- , a Certified Realtime Reporter and Notary Public in and for the State of New York.¶
22 _ _ _ GOLKOW LITIGATION SERVICES, INC. 23 877.370.3377 phI 917.591.5672 fax deps@golkow.com 24¶
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6 BY MS. LIU:¶
7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Q. But you do remember and you reviewed documents that reminded you, or refreshed your recollection, Mr. Cutler, correct, that on multiple occasions, as the top lawyer at the company, you said to business, I do not want this person, Jeffrey Epstein, as a client of the bank, correct?¶
15 16 A. I know that I said that in 2011. I do.¶
17 18 Q. But he remained a client of the bank until August of 2013, correct?¶
19 A. Or thereabouts, yes.¶
20 Q. Who overruled you?¶
21 MR. GAIL: Objection.¶
22 BY MS. LIU:¶
23 Q. Mr. Cutler --¶
1 matter of being overruled, but I believe that Mr. Staley and -- and others in the business decided that we should retain Mr. Epstein as a client, notwithstanding my concerns that his continuing to have an account at JPMorgan created a reputational risk for the firm.¶
Q. And who are the others that you mentioned?¶
A. Well, I don't think that an account for a private bank customer gets retained unless the private bank wants to retain the account and the head of asset management, to whom the private bank reports, wants to retain that account.¶
And then I know in this case Mr. Staley remained involved, given that he was a primary relationship with the account.¶
Q. The head of asset management at the time was Mary Erdoes, correct?¶
A. Correct. Sorry, in 2011, we're talking about, yeah.¶
1 You wrote that, correct?¶
2 A. Yes.¶
3 4 5 Q. Why did you write "it's another to be paying him"? What did you mean by that?¶
6 7 8 9 10 11 A. I'll reiterate what I said before. I think that, essentially, would make Mr. Epstein our business partner, and I didn't think, given the reputational issues, that JPMorgan ought to be business partners with Mr. Epstein.¶
12 13 14 15 16 17 Q. Do you recall that that Gates Foundation project that Mary Erdoes, Jes Staley and with which you were at least partially involved with Jeffrey Epstein, ultimately didn't go through?¶
18 19 20 21 A. Again, that's my recollection, that we did not do -- JPMorgan did not do a Gates Foundation project.¶
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23 24 (Whereupon, Exhibit Cutler-26, JPM-SDNYLIT-00136260, 1 2 Jeffrey Epstein walking the halls or in the elevator at JPMorgan?¶
3 4 A. I don't remember doing that or those precautions having been taken.¶
5 6 7 8 Q. Do you know if your secretary or assistant would recall seeing Jeffrey Epstein or greeting Jeffrey Epstein during that meeting?¶
9 A. I have no idea.¶
10 11 12 13 Q. Do you recall that you had a meeting scheduled -- a next meeting scheduled with Jeffrey Epstein a month later?¶
14 15 A. So I -- I remember two communications with Epstein.¶
16 Q. Okay.¶
17 18 19 20 21 A. So two two meetings. I don't remember whether the second, so the one after this one, I don't remember whether it was an actual in-person meeting or not.¶
22 23 24 I've now seen the calendar entry suggesting that it was going to be a meeting. I just don't remember if, in 1 2 3 fact, it was a meeting or there was a call. I do remember having one, and then there was going to be a second.¶
4 5 6 7 Q. Okay. So you had the first meeting, he says, I'm a good guy, don't hate me, Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, Glenn¶
8 A. I don't remember --¶
9 10 Q. -- he dropped a bunch of names --¶
11 12 13 14 15 16 A. I don't remember which names he mentioned, but he mentioned a lot of names of a lot of people that he considered his friends and confidants. That -- that much I remember. I just don't remember which ones.¶
17 18 Q. And were you persuaded by Jeffrey Epstein at this meeting?¶
19 20 21 A. No. I do remember thinking -- or I do remember telling him, I'm going to think about it.¶
22 23 24 And I remember thinking at the time, he is smooth. He is -- you know, he can be persuasive. And now, you know, with the benefit of 20/20¶
2 hindsight, I can see that he managed to 3 charm a lot of people along the way.¶
4 So I do remember, at the 5 conclusion of the meeting, thinking, 6 okay, I'm going to think about this some.¶
7 Q. Okay.¶
8 A. But it didn't -- he didn't 9 change my mind. And I -- I think I must 10 11 have communicated, all right, I'm going to think about it.¶
12 13 14 Q. And when do you think, relative to that meeting, you arranged to have a second meeting with him?¶
15 16 17 18 A. I only know this from having looked at a couple of the documents. I mean, I think it turned out to be six weeks later.¶
19 20 Q. Okay. So you told him, I'm going to think about it.¶
21 22 Do you recall if in between those two meetings you had any 23 conversation with Mary Erdoes about your 24 meeting?¶
1 A. I don't remember doing that.¶
Q. Do you remember if you had any conversation with Jes Staley about your meeting?¶
A. I don't remember doing that either. It is possible that I told him, I met with him, I'm going to -- I'm going to think about it, I'm going to meet with him again. I just don't -- I just don't remember.¶
Q. Do you recall if you had any conversation with Jamie Dimon about your meeting with Jeffrey Epstein?¶
A. I don't believe I did.¶
Q. Do you recall if you had any conversations with anyone else about -- 17 with anyone about your meeting with Jeffrey Epstein?¶
A. I don't -- it's possible I did, I just don't -- I just don't have a recollection of that.¶
Q. Okay. But you recall you were going to think about it.¶
1 about it, or was that just something you said to end the meeting?¶
A. I do remember thinking about it some. So I -- I don't know that I thought at the end of that meeting, boy, I'm going to change my mind, or there's a good chance I'm going to change my mind.¶
But I -- I think I genuinely thought, okay, I'll do a little bit of 10 thinking about this. And I didn't tell 11 him in that meeting, you know, no way, no how.¶
And then that's when I remember having this thought about, you know, what would I say to -- what would I say to women at JPMorgan? What would I -- you know, what would I say beyond that?¶
And I thought -- I thought there was -- I concluded that there was, in fact, a reputational risk that the firm shouldn't take.¶
Q. Do you know if you talked to Jonathan about the meeting?¶
1 A. I don't remember doing that.¶
I'm actually trying to¶
remember if was still at¶
JPMorgan at that time.¶
Q. So what was Jeffrey Epstein¶
trying to convince you -- what were you¶
going to think about, whether or not¶
you're going to tell Mary Erdoes or Jes¶
Staley or the business in general, you¶
know, I'm not going to stand in the way¶
of this guy staying on as a client; is¶
that -- is that what he was trying to¶
convince you to say?¶
A. Again, I think he was just¶
trying to convince me that he was a¶
decent guy. That, notwithstanding this¶
terrible past and the conviction, that he¶
wasn't as terrible as all that.¶
Q. Why is --¶
20 A. I don't -- I don't -- what I¶
don't remember is, you know, was he¶
trying to convince me that he should be¶
part of the Gates Foundation thing, that¶
1 2 3 you know, in general, the firm shouldn't shy away from, you know, maintaining a I just don't remember.¶
4 5 6 7 Q. Okay. So do you -- you recall there was a second meeting, whether in person or over the phone; is that fair?¶
8 9 A. A second -- a second communication.¶
10 11 Q. And what -- what happened in that second communication?¶
12 13 14 15 16 A. I don't remember. I know I had come to the conclusion that I was not changing my advice. Whether I communicated that to him, I don't remember.¶
17 18 19 20 It would not be crazy for me to say, I'm not telling him what I think, I'm telling my -- I'm telling the people who represent my client what I think.¶
21 22 23 Q. So at no point following those two meetings do you recall ever advising, recommending, saying to the 24 bank, we should retain Jeffrey Epstein as 1 a client?¶
2 A. Absolutely not.¶
3 4 5 6 Q. Do you recall ever again saying, as you had in July of 2011, we should not do business with Jeffrey Epstein?¶
7 8 9 10 11 A. I believe at the conclusion of these two meetings, I said to Jes Staley, I don't believe we should be doing business with him, I haven't changed my mind.¶
12 13 Q. Why did you say it to Jes Staley?¶
14 15 16 A. He was the primary interface with me on Epstein, largely because I think it was his client relationship.¶
17 18 19 20 21 Q. And so you, as the general counsel of JPMorgan, believed, based on that, he was the appropriate person to defer to related to a decision about Jeffrey Epstein; is that fair?¶
22 A. I mean, I -- you could --¶
23 24 MR. EDELMAN: Objection to form.¶
1 You can answer.¶
THE WITNESS: Okay. You could argue it was Jes. You could argue it was Mary. I know they were communicating with one another about Epstein.¶
I -- and maybe it was because my meeting or meetings with Epstein were done at the behest of Staley that I felt like that was primarily who I was talking about. I mean, you've seen in documents I communicated with Mary about the subject.¶
But my best recollection is, following those meetings -- and maybe it's because Jes sort of said, would you please meet with him? Would you hear him out? I remember that, I remember that phrasing, would you hear him out?¶
That I -- I think I would have gone back to him.¶
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2 3 4 5 6 Q. And do you recall what he said to you or what you -- what you remember about any conversations that happened between someone at JPMorgan and Ken Starr related to Jeffrey Epstein?¶
7 8 9 10 11 12 A. My best recollection is we were trying to ascertain whether there was, in fact, an ongoing investigation, that is, an investigation of, you know, current conduct, or call it post-conviction conduct.¶
13 14 15 16 17 And I don't remember the result of the call with Starr, other than we certainly didn't glean from that communication that he thought there was such an investigation.¶
18 19 Q. Why was that the question you were asking?¶
20 21 22 A. I don't know if that was the only question. It may have been a character reference kind of thing.¶
23 24 But at that time, I think we were looking at the account again. There 1 ongoing human trafficking through Jeffrey Epstein?¶
A. Here is what I was interested in: If Mr. Epstein was continuing to engage in unlawful activity, we didn't want him as a client.¶
We understood that he had engaged in unlawful activity in the past. That, itself, raised issues. But we were continuing to serve as his bank and maintain his accounts.¶
If he was involved in in -- if he continued to be involved in criminal activity, we did not want to maintain those accounts.¶
Q. And what did you do to determine whether or not Jeffrey Epstein was continuing to be involved in criminal activity, namely human trafficking?¶
A. Right. I -- again, I would not have personally been involved in that. But we had a compliance department and an anti-money laundering function with well-regarded people. And I trusted 1 the relationship to be terminated.¶
2 3 4 5 Is that consistent with your prior testimony that in 2011 you wanted Jeffrey Epstein to be terminated from the bank?¶
6 7 8 A. I think so. I mean, I think this is -- this states that I wanted to exit the relationship, and I did.¶
9 10 11 Q. So then Nina Shenker says to Jonathan, Is Jes going to talk to Mary to execute the termination?¶
12 Do you see that?¶
13 A. I do.¶
14 15 Q. And do you understand that to be Mary Erdoes?¶
16 MR. GAIL: Objection.¶
17 18 19 THE WITNESS: I'd be guessing along with you, but it would make sense.¶
20 BY MS. LIU:¶
21 22 23 24 Q. And then Jonathan says to Nina, I don't think he has any plans to do so. He understands that Steve is quite firm on the subject and is¶