Denise George

Denise George was the seventeenth Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands, serving from 2019 to 2023. Governor Albert Bryan Jr. nominated her in March 2019, and she took office in May, weeks before Jeffrey Epstein's July 2019 federal arrest. She brought the territory's January 2020 civil enforcement suit against Epstein's estate and its December 2022 suit against JPMorgan Chase. Bryan fired her on December 31, 2022, four days after the JPMorgan filing, a sequence that raised questions about whether the litigation prompted her removal.¹²

Litigation Against the Epstein Estate

George filed the territory's case against Epstein's estate on January 15, 2020, in the Superior Court of the Virgin Islands, under the Criminally Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the territory's racketeering statute. The complaint alleged that Epstein created a network of shell companies, charitable organizations, and individuals that participated in a decades-long pattern of trafficking and sexual abuse of girls and young women at his Virgin Islands properties. She later amended the action to add the estate co-executors Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, Southern Trust Company, and other Epstein-created entities as co-defendants.³⁴

The case settled on December 1, 2022. The estate agreed to pay the territory more than 105 million dollars in cash, to return roughly 80 million dollars in tax benefits the territory said Southern Trust Company had obtained fraudulently under the Economic Development Commission program, and to give the territory half the proceeds of the sale of Little St. James. George stated that the settlement restored the faith of the people of the Virgin Islands that its laws would be enforced against those who break them. In January 2023 the financier Leon Black agreed to pay the territory 62.5 million dollars to resolve potential Epstein-related claims.⁴⁵

Suit Against JPMorgan Chase and Firing

George filed the territory's suit against JPMorgan Chase on December 27, 2022 in federal court in Manhattan, alleging that the bank knowingly facilitated, sustained, and concealed Epstein's trafficking and benefited financially from the relationship. The complaint invoked the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the territory's Criminally Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, and the Virgin Islands consumer-protection statute, and the territory later sought 190 million dollars from the bank. The case settled in September 2023, with JPMorgan paying 75 million dollars to the Virgin Islands and 290 million dollars to Epstein's victims.¹⁶

Governor Bryan fired George on December 31, 2022, four days after the JPMorgan filing and roughly four weeks after the estate settlement closed. Bryan said the firing was unrelated to the suit, but acknowledged that George had filed the action against the largest U.S. bank without first informing him, and stated that he could not have an attorney general launching lawsuits he did not know about. Bloomberg's disclosure of the filing preceded the dismissal. Bryan appointed the assistant attorney general Carol Thomas-Jacobs to serve in the role on an acting basis.²⁷

George later said she felt pressure to resolve the matters quickly and to avoid being part of a cover-up, telling Fortune in November 2023 that her bar license and her integrity were more important to her than the position, and that she would lose her job rather than be part of a conspiracy to conceal anything. The timing of the firing relative to the JPMorgan suit was raised again when the Justice Department's later Epstein file releases renewed attention on her account that she had felt threatened during the litigation.¹⁸