The Other Epstein Investigation
Elite task force, five years, not one indictment
The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #1,016: Friday, September 4th, 2026
There is a 69-page document sitting on a Justice Department server right now…and I want to tell you what’s on page one.
Fifteen names. Fourteen of them blacked out.
The fifteenth is Jeffrey Epstein.
The only name they let you see…belongs to the one man on earth who can no longer be prosecuted.
Read that again…because everything else I’m about to tell you sits on top of it.
What The Document Is
It’s dated May 18, 2015.
It was prepared by the director of a Justice Department outfit called the OCDETF Fusion Center; the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces. That’s not a filing cabinet. That’s the unit the government built to take apart cartels and transnational money-laundering rings.
The case had a name. Operation Chain Reaction. It opened on December 17, 2010, in New York…and it ran for five years.
The memo says Epstein and the fourteen others…were moving “illegitimate wire transfers” tied to illicit drug and prostitution activity in the U.S. Virgin Islands and New York City.
Roughly $50 million in suspicious transfers between 2010 and 2015. Accounts traced to Switzerland…the Cayman Islands…France…and New York.
Law enforcement sources told CBS News the internal case coding pointed at club drugs. Ecstasy. Ketamine. GHB.
Nobody was ever charged. Not Epstein. Not one of the fourteen.
Then the task force that ran it was dismantled in 2025. The Fusion Center that produced the memo has since closed.
Why This Is Not The Story You Already Know
You’ve read a hundred Epstein pieces. So have I.
Almost every one of them is about the same thing: girls…planes…an island…a list of famous men.
This one isn’t about that.
This is a narcotics and money-laundering case. Different agency. Different statutes. Different investigators. It didn’t come out of the trafficking prosecution…and it didn’t die with it.
And…it changes the shape of the crime. A man with a private island and a lot of money is one thing. A man moving eight figures…through four countries…with a drug nexus attached is an operation…and operations have employees…suppliers…and bankers.
Two more details worth your attention…because they’re the kind that get skipped.
First, a law enforcement source told CBS News that for the DEA to open a case like this at all, there has to be a drug nexus.
You don’t get a file number on a hunch. And…the fact that the task force went to the Fusion Center for a full workup…running fifteen names against every major federal database…told that source the investigation was significant…not routine.
Second, the memo notes an FBI investigation opened in 2006 that was still active in 2015…and was linked to Epstein as well.
So…by 2015…you have two federal agencies…with open files on the same man…one of them for narcotics money. And then…nothing happens
Senator Ron Wyden…who has been chasing Epstein’s money since 2022…put the ugliest version of it in a letter: the fact that this unit was on him at all suggests the government had evidence he was drugging his victims to facilitate the abuse.
That’s a serious allegation and Wyden is a partisan. Hold it loosely.
Now The Part Where I Argue Against Myself
You know I don’t bury the stuff that might dispute what I’m presenting…at the bottom This is no exception.
There are four honest reasons this might be nothing.
One.
Federal investigations close without charges constantly. Weak evidence. Statute problems. An agent transfers…a prosecutor declines…the case sits and dies. That’s Tuesday at the Justice Department.
Two.
A former DEA official told NewsNation that in 2010…nothing would have made Epstein’s name stand out among the fifteen. Nobody knew who he was. If that’s right… the case wasn’t about him…and its death wasn’t a favor to him.
Three.
Redacting fourteen people who were never charged is arguably the correct call. Naming an uncharged American…as a drug-trafficking target…is a real harm to a real person. Some of those boxes may be protecting someone who did nothing.
Four.
When Wyden accused Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche of blocking the unredacted memo…Blanche said flatly that nobody was blocking anything…called the accusation fabricated…and said the full document has always sat in a DOJ reading room available to any member of Congress.
I can’t referee that one for you. Neither can anyone else right now.
Fifteen people were investigated for five years. One of them is dead…and he’s the only one you’re allowed to know about.
What Nobody Has Answered
Here’s where I come out.
You don’t need a conspiracy to find this indefensible. You only need a calendar.
The memo is unclassified. It says so at the top of every page. Wyden asked for a clean copy in February. He set a deadline of March 13. That deadline passed almost six months ago.
Six questions are still sitting there unanswered…and they are not hard questions:
Who are the fourteen?
What legal authority hides their names?
What triggered the case in 2010?
What drugs…and moving which direction?
When exactly did Chain Reaction end…and who ended it?
And…why did five years of work on $50 million in suspicious transfers produce no charges at all?
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has since asked about a second OCDETF operation in the same orbit…called Trip Knot. That one has gotten even less attention than this one.
Meanwhile…the task force is gone…the Fusion Center is closed…and the agents who worked it…are scattering into retirement.
Every month that passes…this gets harder to reconstruct. That’s not paranoia. That’s how institutional memory works.
One Thing I’m Asking
The document is public. I’ve linked it below.
It is genuinely readable…and a heavily redacted page tells you something all by itself.
Send this to a reporter. Not a pundit…a reporter, ideally one who covers DEA, financial crime, or the Southern District of New York. This story needs FOIA requests and retired agents…and that takes a newsroom with a budget.
And…if you know somebody who thinks the Epstein story is exhausted…send it to them too. Because the loudest part of this file…is the part with no words on it.
Fourteen black boxes. One dead man. Five years of work and nothing to show for it.
Somebody made that choice. Somebody is still making it.
BONUS: I Can Tell You Some Of The Names
And what those men told Congress this year.
Here is the part that made me put my coffee down. (If you’ve ever watched me with my coffee…yeah.)
In March, Bloomberg reported that it had learned the identities behind some of those black boxes from people familiar with the matter.
They aren’t celebrities. Nobody’s going to trend over them. And…that’s exactly why this matters…because they’re something better than famous.
They’re the infrastructure.
According to Bloomberg’s reporting…the target profile covered Epstein…twelve other individuals…and two businesses. Not fourteen people. Twelve people…and two corporate entities; a detail the redactions flatten completely.
The individuals reportedly included his lawyer, Darren Indyke. His brother, Mark Epstein. And…his accountants…Richard Kahn, Bella Klein, and Harry Beller.
Indyke and Kahn are the co-executors of Jeffrey Epstein’s estate.
Sit with that one. The DEA’s elite organized crime task force builds a target profile around a man and his money in 2015. Four years later that man dies…and two of the people reportedly on that profile…end up running his estate.
The two businesses, per Bloomberg: Wagging Tail Entertainment and Ossa Properties Inc.
Ossa is a real estate company. Wagging Tail…is the entity the entertainment publicist Peggy Siegal did business under.
And the rest? European women who worked as Epstein’s assistants or fashion models.
Now here’s the line that should end this argument.
Earlier this year…Richard Kahn and Darren Indyke sat down with the House Oversight Committee. Both were asked whether the government had ever questioned them about Epstein’s dealings.
Kahn said he had never been questioned by any government authority.
Indyke said, “Personally no. I don’t believe I have.”
Read those two paragraphs again…back to back.
A federal drug and money-laundering task force builds a target profile around these men in 2015. Eleven years later…they tell Congress that no government authority ever asked them anything.
Both of those things cannot be fully true at once. One of them requires an explanation… and nobody in the United States government has offered one.
The Honest Limits
I’m not going to sell you past the evidence.
A “target profile” is an intelligence compilation…not an indictment. It pulls biographical data…border crossings…financial records…and criminal history…on people connected to a case.
Being in one is not being a suspect…and being in one is definitely not being guilty.
None of the men above have been charged with anything related to this. All have denied knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.
Kahn noted he received grand jury subpoenas for estate documents, so “never questioned” may mean never interviewed about conduct, which is a narrower claim than it sounds.
Bloomberg’s identifications come from anonymous sources…not from the document. DOJ has never confirmed them.
And…I’d add the obvious: an investigation that profiles a man’s accountant and his brother is an investigation into money…not into a client list. If you came here for famous names…this isn’t that. It’s better than that. It’s the plumbing.
And Then There’s The Second One
One more thing, and almost nobody has written a word about it.
There was another OCDETF operation. It’s called Trip Knot.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse wrote to DOJ, FBI, and DEA about it on March 16.
His stated concern: Epstein’s name apparently surfaced repeatedly during that investigation…and the Justice Department appears to have released exactly one document about it under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
One.
Whitehouse listed it publicly in July…among dozens of oversight requests the department had simply not answered.
So the scoreboard reads like this. One task force investigation…with fourteen redacted targets and no charges. A second task force investigation…with one released document and no answers. And…the task force itself…abolished.
Three ways to make a thing disappear…running at the same time.
#HoldFast
Back soon.
-Jack
Jack Hopkins
P.S. The government kept a name unredacted on that page. Just one. It belongs to the only person in the group who can’t hire a lawyer, can’t sue, and can’t be indicted. Redactions don’t protect the dead. They protect the living. Fourteen people are still living.
P.P.S. Wyden’s deadline was March 13th. It is now September. If you are waiting for the news cycle to come back around to this on its own…understand what you’re waiting for: a document that gets less findable every month…held by an agency whose task force no longer exists…about a case whose investigators are retiring. Later isn’t neutral here. Later is the strategy.
Sources
DOJ Epstein Files — the original OCDETF memorandum (EFTA00173953)
Sen. Wyden’s February 25, 2026 letter to DEA Administrator Terrance Cole (PDF)
Senate Finance Committee — “Wyden Questions DEA Over Mystery Epstein Investigation”
Senate Finance Committee — “Wyden Sounds Alarm as DAG Blanche Intervenes”
CBS News — “Justice Department blocked release of secret Epstein drug probe file, senator says”
NewsNation — “Jeffrey Epstein was target of 5-year-plus DEA probe”
The Hill — “Wyden presses DEA for answers on secret Epstein investigation”
Just the News — “DEA doc in Epstein files includes probe into suspicious money transfers”
Bloomberg — “Senator Accuses Blanche of Blocking Release of Unredacted Epstein Document”
Fox News — “Epstein’s accountant, lawyer say DOJ never once questioned them about his crimes”
Sen. Whitehouse — outstanding DOJ oversight requests, including Operation Trip Knot
Senate Judiciary Democrats — the full list of ignored DOJ oversight requests
CBS News — the full Epstein files project and document tracker
Had no knowledge of this but am not remotely surprised.
I feel as if we are living in a cheap version of a Robert Ludlum novel.