Stephen Cutler

Stephen M. Cutler is an American securities lawyer who served as Director of the Division of Enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission from October 2001 to May 2005, a period in which the division brought the Enron-related enforcement action that JPMorgan Chase settled for 135 million dollars in July 2003. After a year and a half at the law firm WilmerHale, he became JPMorgan Chase's Executive Vice President and General Counsel in February 2007, reporting to chief executive Jamie Dimon, and held the post through 2015 before becoming a vice chairman of the bank. His tenure as general counsel covered the years in which JPMorgan's compliance staff sought to exit Jeffrey Epstein as a client and the bank retained him until 2013.¹²³⁴⁵

Wilmer, Cutler and the SEC

Cutler graduated summa cum laude from Yale University and received his law degree from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. He clerked for Judge Dorothy Nelson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, was a visiting fellow at the Center for Law in the Public Interest in Los Angeles, and spent eleven years at the Washington firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, where he was a partner. The firm's name refers to its founder Lloyd Cutler; no family relationship to Stephen Cutler is recorded.¹⁵

He joined the SEC in January 1999 as Deputy Director of Enforcement under Richard Walker. By September 19, 2001 he was acting director, and in that capacity issued the Commission's statement on trading around the September 11 attacks: "We have received reports that those associated with the terrorist activities of last week may have sought to exploit our securities markets to profit from those activities. We are vigorously pursuing all credible leads but, at this time, we have drawn no conclusions." The Commission named him Director of the Division of Enforcement on October 25, 2001.¹²

The Enron Bank Cases

On July 28, 2003 the SEC announced that JPMorgan Chase had agreed to pay 135 million dollars in disgorgement, penalty and interest to settle allegations that it helped Enron mislead investors by characterizing what were essentially loan proceeds as cash from operating activities, and that Citigroup would pay 120 million dollars over its roles at Enron and Dynegy. JPMorgan Chase consented, without admitting or denying the allegations, to a final judgment in federal court in Texas permanently enjoining it from violating the antifraud provisions. The actions were coordinated with the New York County District Attorney's Office, which reached parallel settlements with both banks the same day.³

When Cutler announced on April 14, 2005 that he would leave the Commission within a month to return to the private sector, Chairman William Donaldson credited him with overseeing investigations of Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Qwest, Tyco and HealthSouth, which led to actions against Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andrew Fastow, Scott Sullivan, John Rigas, Joseph Nacchio, Dennis Kozlowski and Richard Scrushy, and with more than six billion dollars in penalties and disgorgement. The Commission's release stated that Cutler "led the Commission's groundbreaking efforts against banks, insurance companies and other financial intermediaries for their roles in a number of public company financial reporting failures, including the Commission's cases against Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan and CIBC in connection with Enron's collapse."⁴

General Counsel of JPMorgan Chase

Cutler joined WilmerHale, the successor to his former firm, in October 2005 as a partner and co-chair of its Securities Department. On December 12, 2006 JPMorgan Chase announced that he would become Executive Vice President, General Counsel and head of the firm's legal and compliance activities worldwide, effective February 2007, reporting to Dimon and sitting on the Operating Committee. He succeeded Joan Guggenheimer, who had died earlier that year. Dimon's announcement described him as "a strong leader, noted for his integrity, distinguished service in the public and private sectors, and outstanding reputation in the legal and regulatory communities."⁵⁶

Dimon confirmed in a May 26, 2023 deposition that in 2011 Cutler reported directly to him, reported at least indirectly to the board of directors, and regularly attended board meetings. Dimon said he did not know whether Cutler ever reported to the board about Epstein.⁷ In an April 7, 2023 interview with CNN, asked whether JPMorgan had ignored warnings about Epstein, Dimon said the bank had "some of the best lawyers in the world, compliance, out of the DOJ, out of SEC important divisions who review all of these things and make decisions at the time based on what they know."⁸

On January 1, 2016 Stacey Friedman succeeded Cutler as general counsel and he became a vice chairman of JPMorgan Chase.⁹ He later became a partner at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, from which he retired in 2025, according to a Senate Finance Committee report.¹⁰

Epstein Retention Decisions

JPMorgan's policy classified felons as high-risk clients requiring additional approval. A 2009 internal due-diligence report, produced in the Virgin Islands litigation and quoted by the Senate Finance Committee, recorded that after Epstein's 2008 conviction "Jes Staley conferred with Stephen Cutler and the decision was made to keep Mr. Epstein as a PB client," on a "banking and custody only" basis with brokerage execution withdrawn.¹⁰ In August 2010 Alan "Ace" Greenberg, the former Bear Stearns chairman then at JPMorgan, went to Cutler for an exception to the felon policy so he could continue doing business with Epstein, according to the Virgin Islands' statement of material facts.¹¹ A 2010 email from compliance official Maryanne Williamson stated that Epstein had been "approved to stay after his criminal conviction by [Steve] Cutler."¹⁰

Emails that JPMorgan produced at the end of discovery in May 2023 showed involvement by former Bear Stearns staff in the Epstein relationship in the fall of 2008 and the summer of 2010, including one stating that Greenberg had gone to Cutler "for an exception to the felony policy," and a 2008 email stating: "My understanding is that JPM requires top of the house ok for clients who are convicted felons. (ie PCS Legal to Asset Mgt Legal to Cutler to Jaime Daimnon [sic])." The Virgin Islands read "top of the house" as Jamie Dimon; JPMorgan's counsel answered that a follow-up sent eight minutes later "makes clear the reference to 'top of the house' referred to Mr. Cutler." In the same June 9, 2023 letter the bank stated that after Epstein's 2008 guilty plea "people from legacy Bear Stearns, including Mr. Greenberg, in connection with post-acquisition transition of accounts, may have attempted to speak with Stephen Cutler, then JPMC's General Counsel, about application of JPMC's corporate policy requiring approval of its General Counsel (or Chief Risk Officer) to retain a brokerage account for a client with a felony conviction. That decision ... was made by Mr. Cutler," and that it had been the subject of a search of Cutler's custodial files and of his deposition. A May 2009 due-diligence report produced to the territory in 2020 recorded that "Bear Stearns will hold the brokerage relationship with Mr. Epstein." The bank's filing listed Cutler's deposition testimony on Bear Stearns at transcript pages 212 to 258.¹²¹³

In December 2010 and January 2011 the bank's anti-money-laundering director, William Langford, asked the private bank to re-evaluate its sponsorship of Epstein and to "request re-approval from Steve Cutler if we wanted to retain," in light of human-trafficking allegations; the relationship banker Paul Morris replied, "I thought we decided this was not necessary." Cutler testified that Langford's concerns were "heightened, if you will, by the human trafficking initiative that we're doing, given that he was convicted of these crimes." Cutler also testified that at some point before 2011 the bank would have seen Epstein's federal non-prosecution agreement, and in March 2011 the investment bank's general counsel reported to Cutler a conversation with Epstein's lawyer Jay Lefkowitz, who "represented Epstein in state plea/fed NPA process" and believed "any pre-plea conduct is subsumed within plea/NPA."¹¹

On July 19, 2011 JPMorgan proposed to settle Epstein's claims against Bear Stearns, which JPMorgan had acquired in 2008, for 21 million dollars. Cutler responded the next day: "This is not an honorable person in any way. He should not be a client." On July 21, 2011 he wrote to Mary Erdoes, "I would like to put it and HIM behind us. Not a person we should do business with, period." When the settlement was approved, the private bank's general counsel Nina Shenker told Erdoes that Cutler "asked when we are offboarding JE. I reminded him that we have the other matter outstanding." An August 4, 2011 Rapid Response meeting concluded that John Duffy would "reach out to Jes Staley and advise that we exit while things are a bit settled."¹¹ Epstein remained a client until 2013.¹⁴

Cutler later testified that Jes Staley and Erdoes made the decision to retain Epstein.¹⁴ The Upper Tribunal, deciding Staley's challenge to his UK ban in June 2025, recorded internal JPMorgan evidence that "the view of Mr Stephen Cutler, the General Counsel of JPM, was that Mr Epstein would have been exited as a client of JPM had not Mr Staley vouched for him"; Staley testified that Cutler had full latitude to exit Epstein and that he would not have stood in his way, and the tribunal found it more likely than not that Staley's advocacy caused the retention.¹⁵ Dimon testified that "the ultimate decider would have been the general counsel of the company. That was true then; it's true today. And that person cannot be overridden by a businessperson."⁷

The Wyden Inquiry

In a September 24, 2025 letter to Dimon, Senator Ron Wyden cited reporting that Cutler had reviewed Epstein-related documents "for Jamie" and had held two meetings with Epstein at JPMorgan headquarters in the fall of 2011, and asked the bank to confirm the meetings and produce Cutler's communications about Epstein with Dimon, Erdoes, Staley and the banker Justin Nelson.¹⁶ JPMorgan replied on October 10, 2025 that, "with the exception of former JPMC executive Jes Staley, the Firm's executives (current and former) are respected professionals who acted with integrity and would never have allowed Epstein to remain a client if they knew of his ongoing crimes," and declined to discuss suspicious-activity filings, citing Bank Secrecy Act confidentiality.¹⁷ Wyden's August 4, 2026 report listed Cutler among thirteen bankers whose conduct it said merited investigation by prosecutors and regulators, and recommended that the House Oversight Committee subpoena his Epstein-related email.¹⁰ Cutler has not been charged with any offense or subjected to regulatory discipline in connection with Epstein.

A separate lawyer named Aaron Cutler, a partner at Hogan Lovells, represented Leon Black before the Senate Finance Committee in 2026; no relationship between the two is recorded.¹⁸