By JULIE CARR SMYTH
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Les Wexner’s long-time friendship with Jeffrey Epstein will be the subject of a closed-door congressional deposition in Ohio on Wednesday, where the billionaire retail magnate is expected to face questions about new revelations contained in the latest release of Justice Department documents related to the late sexual predator.
Wexner, 88, the retired founder of L Brands, has said he plans to cooperate with a subpoena from Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
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As one of Epstein’s most prominent former friends, Wexner has already spent years answering for their decades-long association. In court documents, prominent Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre claimed that Wexner was one of the men Epstein trafficked her to.
Wexner has consistently denied any knowledge of or involvement in the millionaire financier’s crimes and says he never met Giuffre. He told L Brands investors in 2019 that he was embarrassed that he ever got close to someone “so sick, so cunning, so depraved.”
He has never been accused of wrongdoing and the overall picture provided by the DOJ documents is that Epstein did not run a sex trafficking ring.
Wexner’s name appears more than 1,000 times in the Epstein files, which his spokesperson said is not unexpected given their longstanding relationship. The documents shed new light on his relationship to Epstein — which ended bitterly after Wexner and his wife Abigail learned he’d been stealing from them — while raising many new questions.
‘A most loyal friend’
Epstein first met Wexner through a business associate around 1986.
It was an opportune time for Wexner’s finances. The successful Ohio businessman had grown a single Limited store in Columbus into a powerhouse suite of ’80s mall-culture staples: The Limited, Limited Express, Lane Bryant and Victoria’s Secret. Abercrombie & Fitch, Lerner, White Barn Candle Co. and others would follow.
Within a couple years, Wexner had turned over management of his vast fortune to Epstein. He gave his now-trusted associate his power of attorney in 1991, allowing Epstein to make investments and do business deals and to purchase property and help develop what would become the vast Wexner estate in then-rural New Albany, Ohio, documents show. Wednesday’s deposition will take place either there or nearby, according to participating lawmakers.
Epstein had “excellent judgment and unusually high standards,” Wexner told Vanity Fair in a 2003 interview, and he was “always a most loyal friend.”
Epstein recalls ‘gang stuff’
In one of the newly released documents, Epstein sent rough notes to himself about Wexner saying: “never ever, did anything without informing les” and “I would never give him up.” Another document, an apparent draft letter to Wexner, said the two “had ‘gang stuff’ for over 15 years” and were mutually indebted to each other — as Wexner helped make Epstein rich and Epstein helped make Wexner richer.
A spokesperson for Wexner said he never received the letter.
“It appears Epstein was furious that Mr. Wexner refused to meet with him years after Mr. Wexner terminated Epstein and cut off all ties with him following Mr. Wexner’s discovery of Epstein’s theft and criminal conduct,” the spokesperson, Tom Davies, said. “The draft appears to fit a pattern of untrue, outlandish, and delusional statements made by Epstein in desperate attempts to perpetuate his lies and justify his misconduct.”
A relationship unravels
Wexner did not publicly reveal until after Epstein’s arrest on federal sex trafficking charges in July 2019 that he had severed their relationship. In a Wexner Foundation letter that August, he said that happened in 2007. However, the Justice Department’s newly released records show the two were in touch after that.
Wexner emailed Epstein on June 26, 2008, after a plea deal was announced that would require him to serve 18 months in a Florida jail on a state charge of soliciting prostitution from a minor in order to avoid federal prosecution. He wound up serving 13 months.
“Abigail told me the result… all I can say is I feel sorry. You violated your own number 1 rule…always be careful,” Wexner wrote. Epstein replied: “no excuse.”
Davies said the 2007 date Wexner cited in 2019 applied to firing Epstein as financial adviser, revoking his power of attorney and removing his name from Wexner’s bank accounts.
Wexner also said in the 2019 letter that Epstein had misappropriated “vast sums” of his and his family’s fortune while overseeing his finances. An investigative memo from the latest document release says that Wexner’s attorneys told investigators in 2008 that Epstein had repaid him $100 million, thought to be just a portion of what he stole.
Continuing fallout for Wexner
Newly released documents emboldened sexual assault survivors in ways that have increased pressure on Wexner.
Epstein survivor Maria Farmer has said she was vindicated by a redacted FBI report contained in the documents, which confirms that she filed one of the earliest complaints against Epstein.
Though the complaint reported his possession of nude photos of underage girls, the records have drawn new attention to the harrowing account of an alleged sexual encounter forced on her by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in the summer of 1996 at Epstein’s home in New Albany. The home was located about a half mile from the Wexners’ home. The Wexners have said they had never heard anything about Farmer’s account of the crime until it appeared in news accounts years later.
Meanwhile, survivors of another sexual predator — the late Dr. Richard Strauss, a team doctor at the Ohio State University who was found to have sexually abused at least 177 male students over years — are citing Wexner’s association with Epstein to try to get his name removed from a campus football complex built with his contributions. Their request is pending before a university committee. Davies declined comment.
The alumni group scored a legal victory last week, though, when a district court judge said they can compel Wexner to testify in their lawsuit against the university. He sat on Ohio State’s board of trustees during the period when Strauss, who died before his deeds came to light, committed his crimes.
Separately, a spokesperson for Ohio State said the head of its Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Dr. Mark Landon, is cooperating with the school’s investigation into his mention in the Epstein files. Newly released documents indicated that Epstein had Landon on retainer in 2006 for $25,000 a quarter.
“I did not provide any clinical care for Jeffrey Epstein or any of his victims,” Landon said in a statement. “I was a paid consultant for the New York Strategy Group regarding potential biotech investments from 2001 to 2005.” A statement from Davies said the advice Epstein was soliciting was on the Wexners’ behalf.
