A leading Senate Democrat is calling on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to provide information on a long-running — and long secret — investigation into possible drug trafficking and suspicious financial transactions involving Jeffrey Epstein and 14 alleged co-conspirators. CBS News first reported Monday on the existence of the case, based on a heavily redacted 69-page DEA memo found in the Epstein files.
“In addition to sex trafficking, it appears that Epstein and his associates were under investigation by the DEA for other major crimes, including illicit drug trafficking and money laundering,” Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, says in a letter to DEA Administrator Terrance C. Cole.
The DEA memo, marked “sensitive but unclassified,” was among more than 3 million pages of documents recently released by the Justice Department.
The memo, from 2015, refers to a DEA Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces probe nicknamed “Chain Reaction.” It noted that the case was opened in 2010 in New York and was “judicial pending,” indicating that the investigation remained active at the time the memo was drafted 5 years later.
The co-conspirators, it said, were being investigated for “illegitimate wire transfers which are tied to illicit drug and/or prostitution activities occurring in the U.S. Virgin Islands and New York City,”
“The fact that Epstein was under investigation by the DOJ’s OCDETF task force suggests that there was ample evidence indicating that Epstein was engaged in heavy drug trafficking and prostitution as part of cross-border criminal conspiracy,” Wyden writes. “This is incredibly disturbing and raises serious questions as to how this investigation by the DEA was handled.”
Other than Epstein’s, the names of those targeted in the investigation are blacked out in the version released by the Justice Department. Many details about the investigation are also redacted.
Document released by Department of Justice 
Wyden expresses concern that the “excessive redactions … go well beyond the intent of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which allows for redactions to protect the identity of victims, not members of a criminal sex trafficking organization.”
He also questions why no charges were brought against Epstein or the others for drug trafficking or financial crimes, and whether “DEA and DOJ during the first Trump Administration moved to terminate this investigation in order to protect pedophiles.”
DEA did not respond to CBS News’ request for comment.
Wyden’s letter asks the DEA to turn over a full, unredacted copy of the memo by March 13 for his committee’s investigation. He also asks the agency to provide more information about why Epstein and the 14 others were under investigation, when the case concluded, and why no federal drug trafficking or money laundering charges were ever filed against them.
