Jay Clayton
Not a prosecutor
This is part of an ongoing TrueHoop series investigating Jeffrey Epstein. If you’re new, here’s the place to start. Today’s story follows closely on the heels of a story about how Jeffrey Epstein preferred to interact with authorities, and another about the legal action that frightens members of Epstein’s circle.
“It’s a great story,” Jeffrey Epstein declares, of his own story.
Epstein reports that in 2008, he was cut off from all media, and learned from a prison guard that the entire economy was in meltdown. (Possibly this is bullshit—because didn’t Epstein have work release to his own office where he presumably could have consumed all the media he wanted?)
Anyway, Epstein says that once he learned Bear Stearns was in the headline, he used one of the two collect calls he was allowed each day to call the head of Bear Stearns, Jimmy Cayne. And then he got his contact at JP Morgan on another phone, “I was going between two phones, talking to Bear Stearns and JP Morgan at the same time, and I found that amusing.”
The implication from the newly released video footage that Steve Bannon recorded of Epstein is that JP Morgan bought Bear Stearns perhaps in part because of some dealmaking Epstein brokered from lockup.
What’s certain is that he knew Cayne, and plenty of people at JP Morgan.
In reality, Bear Stearns hired several attorneys to do that deal. One of them was named Jay Clayton. What’s hard to ascertain is whether or not he worked with Epstein in any way.
Jay Clayton is an interesting cat—especially now that we’re trying to unpack a rat’s nest of billionaires, powerbrokers, and intelligence.
Clayton grew up in Pennsylvania, and spent two years at King’s College Cambridge, from 1988 to 1990. Then he began his career as an attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell, an old American law firm with the most outlandish history.
It’s plausibly true that Sullivan & Cromwell founded American intelligence. Both Dulles brothers worked for the firm, which represented almost every early firm associated with American intelligence, especially United Fruit (which Leon Black’s dad, Eli Black, would eventually purchase.) Also: Leon Black’s sister-in-law is a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell right now.
Clayton’s biography includes many Epstein-affiliated people and companies:
