Judge tells ex-Barclays boss Jes Staley to stop whining over legal action into his relationship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein
Ex-Barclays boss Jes Staley has been accused of whining by a judge overseeing legal action connected to his relationship with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Judge Jed Rakoff rejected a request by Staley to separate a lawsuit against him by his one-time employer JP Morgan from two other cases involving the Wall Street bank.
Staley also asked for the trial date to be pushed back to March 2024.
Denied: Judge Jed Rakoff rejected a request by Staley (pictured) to separate a lawsuit against him by his one-time employer JP Morgan from two other cases involving the Wall Street bank
‘None of Staley’s whines remotely warrants either a severance or a change in the joint trial date,’ the judge said in a New York court ruling.
The ruling dismissed ‘the supposed need of his 400-attorney law firm for more time to prepare’.
It is the latest episode in a legal battle, centred on Epstein’s behaviour, involving JP Morgan. Staley was a senior executive at the investment bank – before he joined Barclays – and financier Epstein was his client.
JP Morgan faces two civil suits alleging it enabled Epstein’s activities – one from the US Virgin Islands, where Epstein had a home, and the other brought by an alleged victim.
Lawyers for the US Virgin Islands claimed that the disgraced financier’s behaviour was ‘so widely known at JP Morgan that senior executives joked about his interest in young girls’.
The bank is seeking to claw back tens of millions of dollars it paid Staley from 2006 to 2013 to cover costs it may incur as a result.
Court documents show it has identified Staley – who quit as Barclays boss in November 2021 after a probe by City regulators into his relationship with Epstein – as the ‘powerful financial executive’ said by the alleged anonymous victim ‘Jane Doe’ to have sexually assaulted her.
She claimed Staley (pictured) had Epstein’s permission to do what he wanted to her – but she had been too afraid to name him.
Staley’s legal team, in seeking to sever the cases, has described allegations about his connection to Epstein as ‘slanderous’ and ‘baseless’ and claimed the legal timeline gave him ‘grossly insufficient time’ to mount a defence.
But the judge said: ‘Stripped of its heated rhetoric, Staley’s motion identifies no issue that was not previously considered by the court.’
His lawyer declined to comment when asked by the Mail about the ‘whines’.
