victoria secr wexner
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Sen. John Husted, a MAGA-friendly Ohio Republican, voted against a measure to release the Jeffrey Epstein files last year, only a few months after taking a donation from a man recently named as an alleged Epstein conspirator.
On Friday, The New Republic reported on Husted's "shady" transaction, first uncovered this week by local news outlet TiffinOhio. According to campaign filings obtained from the Federal Election Commission and the office of the Ohio Secretary of State, the senator has received over $116,000 on contributions from Les Wexner throughout his decades-long career in politics, dating back to 2001.
Wexner co-founded Bath & Body Works and is credited with the nationwide expansion of the Victoria's Secret clothing and beauty chain. This week, Rep. Ro Khanna also revealed on the House floor that he was named as an unindicted co-conspirator of the late sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, alongside several other powerful men. Previous reports have uncovered a close relationship between the businessman and Esptein, with Wexner retaining the latter's services as a financial manager for two decades between 1987 and 2007. Wexner was, at one point, considered the primary client of Epstein's firm.
Husted most recently accepted a $3,500 contribution from Wexner in July, only two months before he voted against a measure to force the disclosure of the Epstein files. By November, however, the Epstein Fils Transparency Act had gained considerably more momentum, passing the House with only one "no" vote and in the Senate by unanimous consent.
Khanna read Wexner's name and others out on the House floor after calling out the Justice Department for its efforts to redact the files. Many accused the agency of hiding co-conspirators, despite its claim that it only redacted the names of Epstein victims. Khanna claimed that the names of Wexner and the others could be found in the unredacted files recently provided to members of Congress.
In the months leading up to that November vote, Husted spoke out against releasing the files, at one point telling NewsNation that Trump was avoiding the issue to focus on "trade deals" and ending the last government shutdown. Husted has also been accused in recent years of pivoting sharply from his past standing as a traditional conservative lawmaker to, as The New Republic characterized, a "steady MAGA sycophant."
Wexner has also made donations to Ohio's junior senator, Bernie Moreno, who expressed similar opposition to the disclosure of the Epstein files, accusing Democrats and the media of putting too much focus on them.
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SOME TALK
Leslie Herbert Wexner[3] (born September 8, 1937) is an American billionaire businessman, the co-founder and chairman emeritus of Bath & Body Works, Inc. (formerly Limited Brands).[4]
Wexner retained Jeffrey Epstein as his financial manager from 1987 to 2007 and was initially the "main client" of Epstein's money-management firm, according to Bloomberg. Epstein ran his business out of a house Wexner owned and sometimes lived in it.[5][6]
Early life and education
Wexner was born in Dayton, Ohio,[7] on September 8, 1937, to parents Bella née Cabakoff (1908–2001) and Harry Louis Wexner (1899–1975).[8] Both his parents were of Russian-Jewish origin.[4] His father was born in Russia and his mother was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.[4] She moved to Columbus, Ohio, as a toddler.[8] Wexner has a younger sister, Susan.[9]
Wexner attended Bexley High School and Ohio State University.[9] He initially expressed an interest in architecture[10] but graduated in 1959[11] with a major in business administration.[7] While a student at Ohio State University, he joined the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity. Wexner served in the Air National Guard.[4] He briefly attended the Moritz College of Law.[9]
Career
Wexner began his retail career working in his parents' clothing store, "Leslie's", which had been named after him.[10] According to Wexner, he began working at his parents' store so they could take a vacation.[10] Wexner analyzed the sales and inventory, identifying the most and least profitable items. When his father refused to adjust the inventory, Wexner decided to open his own store.[12]
In 1963, Wexner's aunt lent him $5,000, which he combined with a matching loan from a bank in order to start The Limited.[9][10] The store took its name from its focus on moderately priced merchandise, such as skirts, sweaters and shirts, that sold quickly and quickly generated revenue.[12] Wexner opened the first store on August 10, 1963, in the Kingsdale Shopping Center in Upper Arlington, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. One year later, Wexner's parents closed their store and joined their son in running The Limited.[8] He opened the second Limited store in August 1964.[10] He took Limited Brands public in 1969, listed as LTD on the NYSE.[10]
A. Alfred Taubman served as a mentor for Wexner, starting in the mid 1960s, and the two partnered on many deals involving Taubman's shopping malls.[9]
Wexner expanded The Limited considerably in the 1970s, having opened the 100th store in 1976.[9] He took on significant debt in 1978 to purchase the importer and manufacturer Mast Industries, which provided him with essential business advantages over competitors.[9]
:{In the 1980s, Wexner doubled his retail holdings by purchasing other companies and became known as a major retail owner at malls in America. Most notably, he acquired the lingerie business Victoria's Secret in 1982. Started as an MBA project by Stanford graduate Roy Raymond, Victoria's Secret attracted Wexner's interest due to the unique, high quality merchandise and Victorian-era decor of the shop that featured red-velvet sofas. Raymond described Wexner as "very guarded", stating, "When I met him, it was as if he met the devil."[10] Six months later, when Raymond was facing bankruptcy, he contacted Wexner and offered to sell Victoria's Secret.[10]
Wexner bought the company for $1 million, and by 1992 it was worth an estimated $1 billion.[13] After Wexner assumed ownership, Victoria's Secret became widely known for marketing its items with the use of super models featured in an annual fashion show, overseen by Ed Razek.[13] By 2015, sales were in decline and 2018 was the final year for the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show until its revival in 2024.[13]}:
In 1993, Wexner hired Len Schlesinger, a Harvard Business School professor, whom he later appointed as a company director, to advise him.[14][15]
Over the years, Wexner built L Brands, a retailing and marketing conglomerate that included Victoria's Secret, Pink (Victoria's Secret for teens), Bath & Body Works, Henri Bendel, The White Barn Candle Company, and La Senza. Previous brands that were spun off include Lane Bryant, Abercrombie & Fitch, Lerner New York, The Limited Too (now Tween Brands, Inc.), Structure 9, Aura Science, The Limited (which closed its brick-and-mortar stores while retaining its online presence), and Express (which closed its Canadian stores and hundreds of its U.S.-based stores).
In 2012, CNN Money described Wexner as the longest serving CEO of a Fortune 500 company.[16] He was on Harvard Business Review's Top 100 Best Performing CEOs in the World, ranked number 11 in 2015,[17] and number 34 in 2016.[18] In February 2020, Wexner announced that he was transitioning from CEO of L Brands into the role of chairman emeritus.[4]
Jeffrey Epstein association
Wexner hired Jeffrey Epstein as his financial manager from 1987 to 2007.[19][20] He was the primary client of Epstein, who claimed to only work with clients with a net worth of one billion USD or greater. Wexner purchased his New York property, the Herbert N. Straus House, in 1989 and sold it to Epstein in the mid-1990s following Wexner's marriage to Abigail.[19] In July 1991, Wexner granted Epstein power of attorney[21] and also instated him as a trustee on the board of the Wexner Foundation.[22]
The Herbert N. Straus House on the Upper East Side
Wexner has been accused of failing to take action when complaints were raised against Epstein, after executives of L Brands reported in the mid-1990s that Epstein was abusing his power and connection to Wexner by posing as a recruiter for Victoria's Secret models.[21] Maria Farmer contacted local and federal authorities about an assault she allegedly endured by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell while working as an artist-in-residence on Wexner's Ohio property in 1996. Within a year of Farmer's complaint, actress Alicia Arden filed a police report in Los Angeles detailing that Epstein had misrepresented himself as a recruiter for Victoria's Secret prior to another alleged assault.[21]
In early 2006, Epstein was charged in Florida with "multiple counts of molestation and unlawful sexual activity with a minor".[21] The New York Times reported that 18 months after the charges were filed, Wexner cut his ties with Epstein.[21]
In August 2019, following Epstein's second incarceration and prior to his death, Wexner addressed the Wexner Foundation, releasing a written statement that his former financial advisor, Jeffrey Epstein, had "misappropriated vast sums of money" from him and from his family.[23] Wexner retained the services of Debevoise & Plimpton criminal defense attorney and former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Mary Jo White.[24]
Wexner faced additional public scrutiny in late 2019 and early 2020, when a group of wrestlers who are survivors of the Ohio State University abuse scandal publicly called on state and federal officials to conduct further inquiry into Maria Farmer's allegations of sexual assault at the Wexner property.[25][26] The wrestlers called for accountability for the Wexner family's alleged involvement in Epstein's abuse and raised the issue of the continuing influence of Abigail and Leslie Wexner serving as the "biggest and best-known benefactors" of the university.[26]
L Brands shareholders filed a complaint in the Court of Chancery of Delaware on January 14, 2021, stating that Wexner, among others, created an "entrenched culture of misogyny, bullying and harassment", and was aware of abuses being committed by Jeffrey Epstein, which breached Wexner's fiduciary duty to the company and devalued the brand. The complaint also names Wexner's wife, current chair Sarah E. Nash, and former marketing officer Ed Razek, whose "widely known misconduct" was allegedly allowed at the company.[27]
In the media
Wexner was profiled in New York Magazine in August 1985; he told the interviewer that he felt he had a dybbuk, a malevolent spirit from Jewish folklore. He said the spirit continually prodded him to be successful, and that it looked like him.[28]
In 2022, he was mentioned in the pop song "Victoria's Secret",[29] for profiting off women and contributing to their toxic body ideals.[30][31] When Jax sings that "I know Victoria's secret, and girl, you wouldn't believe. She's an old man who lives in Ohio making money off of girls like me", she refers to Wexner.
Wexner's relationship with Epstein was one of the subjects of the 2022 Hulu documentary Victoria's Secret: Angels and Demons.[32]
Philanthropy
In 1989, Wexner and his mother Bella were the first to make a $1 million personal donation to the United Way. Both of their names were inscribed in marble and are on display in the lobby of the United Way Headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia.[33]
Wexner was listed by Forbes in 2017, the wealthiest of seven billionaires from Ohio who made the list.[34] He was a major funder of the Wexner Center for the Arts at the Ohio State University, which is named in honor of his father.[35]
Wexner explained that because "growing up, my folks moved around a lot, and I never got a good Jewish education", he felt unprepared to take leadership roles in the Jewish community.[36] So, in 1985, he joined Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman to establish the Wexner Foundation's first core program, aimed "to educate Jewish communal leaders in the history, thought, traditions and contemporary challenges of the Jewish people".[36]
Wexner receives Woodrow Wilson award in 2004.
In 1991, Wexner formed with billionaire Charles Bronfman the Study Group, which is more widely known as the Mega Group.[37] The group was a loosely organized club of some of the country's wealthiest and most influential businessmen who were concerned with Jewish issues. Max Fischer, Michael Steinhardt, Leonard Abramson, Edgar Bronfman, and Laurence Tisch were some of the members. The group would meet twice a year for two days of seminars related to the topic of philanthropy and Judaism. In 1998, Steven Spielberg spoke about his personal religious journey.[38] The group, which Wexner co-chaired with Charles Bronfman, went on to inspire a number of philanthropic initiatives such as the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education, Birthright Israel, and the upgrading of national Hillel.[37]
Wexner served on the Board of Trustees of Ohio State University from 1988 to 1997. In December 2005, Wexner was appointed to his second term and was elected chairman in 2009. It was announced in June 2012 that Wexner's chairmanship was to end, eight years before his appointment would have ended.[39]
On May 11, 2004, Wexner received the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship at a dinner in Columbus. The award was presented by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
On February 16, 2011, Wexner pledged a donation of $100 million to Ohio State, to be allocated to the university's academic Medical Center and James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute, with additional gifts to the Wexner Center for the Arts and other areas. This gift is the largest in the university's history.[40]
Through the L Brands Foundation, Wexner and L Brands contributed $163.4 million to the Columbus Foundation.[41]
On February 10, 2012, the Ohio State University board of trustees voted to rename the Ohio State University Medical Center to the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, commemorating "Mr. Wexner's indelible, lifelong legacy of leadership at Ohio State", according to university president E. Gordon Gee, during over 30 years of "ardent support" of the institution.[42][11]
Personal life
On January 23, 1993, Wexner married Abigail S. Koppel, an attorney.[43] The couple have four children.[44]
Formerly of the Bexley area, Wexner now lives in New Albany, a community northeast of Columbus. He owns a 30-room, $47 million, Georgian-inspired estate, on nearly 336 acres (1.36 km2), that was built in 1990. The estate was, for 20 years, the location of the Annual New Albany Classic Invitational Grand Prix & Family Day (an equestrian show) benefiting The Center for Family Safety and Healing. In February 2018, Abigail Wexner announced the end of the event, citing the growing number of equestrian competitions.[45]
Wexner has owned the mid-18th century Foxcote House in Warwickshire, England, since 1997.[46]
George W. Bush appointed Wexner to serve in the Honorary Delegation to accompany him to Jerusalem for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel in May 2008.[47][48]
Wexner was inducted as an honorary member of the 104th Sphinx Senior Class at Ohio State University on May 7, 2010.[49]
Political activities
Wexner hosted a fundraiser in 2012 for Mitt Romney[50] and donated $250,000 to Restore Our Future, Romney's super PAC.[51] In 2015, Wexner donated $500,000 to the Right to Rise USA super Pac that supported the 2016 presidential campaign of Jeb Bush.[52]
The Columbus Dispatch reported on September 14, 2018, that Wexner had renounced his affiliation with the Republican Party due to changes in its nature. Wexner made his comment shortly after former President Barack Obama gave a speech on the same Columbus Partnership panel that Wexner addressed.[53][54]
See also
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duck 2 26
The Columbus Dispatch
Wexner and Trump's apparent creepy notes to Epstein show misogyny's ...
Sep 11, 2025Wexner and Trump's apparent creepy notes to Epstein show misogyny's power | Opinion The 2003 book and the people who contributed — New Albany billionaire Les Wexner and President Donald Trump ...
The Independent
Billionaire Leslie Wexner to be subpoenaed over Jeffrey Epstein ...
Jan 8, 2026Billionaire Leslie Wexner is set to be subpoenaed by the US House of Representatives Oversight Committee regarding his connections to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
WOSU Public Media
Wall Street Journal alleges Les Wexner signed 2003 lewd birthday card ...
Jul 18, 2025The Wall Street Journal reported Lex Wexner signed the 50th birthday card given to Jeffrey Epstein and drew an image of a naked woman. This comes as debate continues to rage about Epstein and whether President Donald Trump should release documents related to Epstein's sex trafficking crimes.
- [
Fortune
Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Victoria's Secret CEO Leslie Wexner ...
Sep 9, 2025Other major figures to leave a note for Epstein, according to the document turned over by the Epstein estate, were Leslie Wexner and Leon Black.
cleveland.com
Ohio's wealthiest person included suggestive drawing in Epstein ...
Jul 18, 2025Leslie Wexner, founder of Victoria's Secret, included a breast drawing and cryptic note in an album compiled for Jeffery Epstein's 50th birthday that also featured contributions from Donald Trump.
MSN
Les Wexner donated to several Republican candidates as recently ... - MSN
3 days agoWexner formally left the Republican Party as a registered voter in 2018, but his continued donations to Republican candidates and committees highlight how major donors often maintain influence ...
notus.org
https://www.notus.org › republicans › ohio-lawmakers-donations-jeffrey-epstein-associate-les-wexner
Ohio Lawmakers Stay Mum on Donations From Epstein Associate Les Wexner ...
3 days agoBillionaire businessman Leslie Wexner, who is listed as a potential "co-conspirator" to Jeffrey Epstein in newly unredacted files, spent more than $250,000 in the past year toward Republican candidates, especially in his home state of Ohio. But it's not something those lawmakers' offices want to discuss. Wexner has been closely linked to Epstein for years, but came under scrutiny this ...
AP News
https://apnews.com › political-news-general-news-fcee8f6e04e148a9aa35cdb4a3eeccf7
Top political donor to GOP says he's no longer a Republican
Wexner proclaimed last year he'd "just had it" after Republican President Donald Trump said there was blame on "both sides" for deadly violence at an August 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. He vowed to demand civility from politicians seeking his support.
POLITICO
Longtime Epstein associate gave $250K to RGA - POLITICO
Feb 7, 2022Wexner, the wealthiest Republican donor in Ohio with a reported net worth of $5.8 billion, has donated more than $3.5 million to federal candidates and party committees since 1980, according to ...
TIME
https://time.com › 5439516 › donald-trump-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting-les-wexner
Les Wexner Blames Donald Trump Rhetoric for Shooting | TIME
For Les Wexner, Saturday's shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue wasn't just an attack on his faith; it was a reaffirmation of his decision to leave the Republican Party. The Ohio billionaire ...
Jim Renacci For Governor
POLITICO: Anti-Trump Epstein Associate Wexner Maxed Out Donations To ...
"Wexner's last contribution to the DeWine campaign was in 2020, when he and his wife gave the maximum donation of $26,500." Politico is out with a new report this morning on longtime Jeffrey Epstein associate, Trump critic, and Ohio billionaire Les Wexner's eyebrow-raising $250,000 donation to the Republican Governors Association last month.
advicescout.com
https://www.advicescout.com › les-wexners-influence
Les Wexner's Influence on Politics & Philanthropy
Oct 20, 2025Naming rights, program design, and strategic plans play off subtly donor preferences. Wexner's philanthropy sparked discussion in higher education and health care. What happens when one donor's influence looms too large?
factually.co
Which Republican donors had documented business ties o...
Dec 20, 2025The sources show Wexner's status as a prominent Republican donor and describe the substantial personal and business connections between him and Epstein, making Wexner the clearest example of a GOP donor with business transactions or management ties to Epstein [3][5]. 3.
iHeart
Les Wexner Donates 250K To the Republican Governors Association
The donation drew renewed scrutiny not just because of Wexner's past ties to Epstein, who once held power of attorney over Wexner's finances, but because Wexner had publicly distanced himself from the Republican Party following the rise of Donald Trump.
Spreaker
Mega Edition: Les Wexner And His Political Patronage And The ... - Spreaker
Oct 4, 2025Les Wexner, billionaire founder of L Brands and longtime Epstein associate, has poured significant money into Republican politics over the years. He was a high-profile donor in the 2012 presidential race, hosting fundraisers for Mitt Romney and giving $250,000 to the pro-Romney "Restore Our Future" super PAC.
https://gregolear.substack.com/p/deconstructing-the-epstein-myth-what
...SK
Well, was looking at all of the criminals around Donald, and I had a head start with a piece of information that I had gotten in 2005—before there was even an imagination that this man would run for president. I think to the layman’s understanding, if you knew who Trump was, which people did, that he was political in any way, just maybe he had been and we learned that he had been.
In 2005, Trump had this new reality show with Mark Burnett. And so I had a circle of people that I knew. I’m a writer, screenwriter. So I knew folks in that circle with that man.
GO
Okay. Meaning Burnett.
SK
Yes, Burnett. And I had learned that Donald was in a tremendous amount of debt to some Russians. And it was threatening this new thing—this idea of him as this self-made, you know, billionaire, whatever, whatever the thing was, a successful businessman, because it was all about to crumble. And there’s been a tremendous amount of reporting since I learned that. Verifying all of that. So I had that information at the time, back in the day.
And so when he came down that escalator, I knew, I was like, “Oh no, that’s the guy that’s in debt to a bunch of Russian gangsters!” And so I started trying to figure out who those Russians may be. And then in doing that, I came across Jeffrey Epstein.
GO
Okay, interesting. So Trump to the Russians to Epstein.
## Tinker, Tailor, Mobster, Trump
March 31, 2020
SK
Yeah, well, organized crime—specifically Russian organized crime. And then trying to understand Donald and Fred, Fred’s empire, his father’s empire, which was built with the Genovese crime family. And then the building of Trump Tower in Manhattan that moved in—they had different territory as Fred would call it, as Donald has said on the record—that Manhattan wasn’t. According to his father, “That’s not our territory,” because it wasn’t, it was Gambino territory. For Donald Trump specifically to be able to build in Manhattan, develop in Manhattan, Fred arranged for, and Roy Cohn arranged for, the two crime families, the Gambinos and the Genovese to form what became known as a concrete cartel—all the five families were in there. And this was the bid-rigging over concrete contacts to develop in Manhattan. And it was called “the Donald Trump deal.” And so that was in the middle of it, for those U.S. crime families and the racket they were running, which is this very racket that Giuliani used to prosecute the five families. So…
GO
Four of the five families.
SK
Four of the five families. Castellanos was a holdout and then was killed, shot dead in the street. So that’s the history.
There’s way more than that. During that time, before the Russian mafia had really taken over New York—which it did; it rolled in in the late 80s, some of it even back to the 70s, but very specifically in the 80s and the 90s and just sort of rolled up a lot of the territories as their own. And they did it by laundering money through Donald’s casinos. There was a lot of ways that they did all of that. There was a very prominent Russian gangster named Ivankov, who had actually an office in Trump Tower in Manhattan, but he was ultimately caught, tipped off and caught by Andy McCabe’s team.
Like when you start learning about these characters, of what they were doing back in the day, both on the law enforcement side pursuing Russian organized crime and from the Russian organized crime side—the bosses and the key figures there were all in business in some fashion with Donald Trump.
Then in the mid early 2000s to like 2005, 2006, right around when I was hearing this stuff about him, what was happening was the Russians were wanting to keep using Trump to go internationally. So the properties: Trump Panama developing and Trump Toronto developing and Trump Georgia developing and all of these foreign developments, which we were watching. If you watch “The Apprentice,” it unfolds on “The Apprentice” as well. This sort of expansion of the Trump thing where he was just licensing his name to be put on these things, because he was really over-leveraged.
Like the one in Georgia, the country Georgia—the Trump Tower there, all they did was just stick a shovel in the ground, and a whole bunch of money was laundered. There’s Trump Baku, which, you know, there was quite a bit of reporting how that was probably a front for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Again, Iran and their corruption very closely tied in with Russian organized crime as well.
GO
Right. Adam Davidson in the New Yorker.
SK
So that’s the background. That’s why the Trump/Russia thing is not a hoax. Donald is the hoax. You know, he did. And there’s so much reporting and Trump, the company, Allen Weisselberg, all those people, they affirm this, they said, “Yeah, yeah, we took that money.” The problem with it is some of it was illegal, but a lot of it’s not illegal, right?
He couldn’t get a casino license in Australia, infamously. They would not give him a casino license because of his ties to organized crime, both U.S. organized crime and Russian organized crime.
GO
So a major Five Eyes power decided that Trump couldn’t have a casino license because of his ties to organized crime—and specifically Russian organized crime. Let’s just underline that because it seems important. Australia is, as they say, a real country, you know—that is one of our strongest allies.
SK
Right. Right.
So how you get to Jeffrey is, there was a time in the 80s where Donald was really having issues, and he was sort of over-leveraging himself. He was building in Atlantic City. He was doing these things and couldn’t get them funded. He always had a problem getting the money because legitimate banks would stop lending to him, which was the crisis he was facing in the early 2000s, mid-2000s. There was Deutsche Bank, but even Deutsche Bank was turning him down, so he had to go for this Russian money. You could get Russian money, you could get Chinese money, and the Chinese money hadn’t quite showed up yet. But the gangsters will invest in you. So the banks were difficult.
Now part of the stuff that made it hard to get finding from U.S. banks is because of what happened with him in the 80s with Bear Stearns. So there’s a guy that ran Bear Stearns.
(This is all the reporting done by Wayne Barrett. And I recommend everybody go read Wayne Barrett’s work on Donald and Fred Trump and that sort of “Trump Inc.” He did extraordinary work on that. He also did great work on Giuliani and showing what sort of a criminal and a fraud Giuliani was. And it still is, I guess.)
So Ace Greenberg ran Bear Stearns. Bear Stearns is the company that infamously went down in 2008 with all the credit-default swaps, all that kind of stuff that just crashed—you know, the Big Shorttype of thing.
But before that, they were a real player—Bear and Lehman and these other entities. Goldman Sachs. And so Donald had a very close relationship with Ace Greenberg. Ace Greenberg is the man whose daughter was Jeffrey Epstein’s student when Jeffrey Epstein was at the Dalton School. And Epstein did whatever he did at the Dalton School to leverage his just being a math teacher and tutor at this private school into working directly for Ace Greenberg.
So he went into the financial industry at Bear Stearns. And he didn’t come in as a low-level person and work his way up. He came in at a very senior level, and it caused a great sort of upset at Bear Stearns. Who is this guy? Where is he coming from? And why is Ace giving him this plum spot?
And he was handling private wealth management. And his big client that he had, that Ace gave him, was Edgar Bronfman, who’s Sam Bronfman’s son. Sam Bronfman, he established Seagrams, and he was Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano’s business partner during the bootlegging days. And Edgar Bronfman has a lot of ties to Russia as well, quite frankly. And it’s his daughters that were part of that NXIVM thing. That’s how people recognize that name, Bronfman.
GO
He’s Canadian though, right? Sam Bronfman?
SK
Yes, he was Canadian. So that was part of the bootlegging thing. Yeah.
But that was Jeffrey’s client, and he got into difficulties and troubles there at Bear Stearns with that particular client managing, you know, and he basically had to be fired. And Ace really resisted firing Jeffrey. And what I uncovered and discovered was that he didn’t fire him. He just moved him into Offshores. Jeffrey went into establishing offshore accounts and offshore money, sort of tax havens for Bear Stearns clients.
If you go into the Offshore Leaks database—which is where I found Jeffrey’s offshore accounts, some of them—you can see there are old Bear Stearns officers. In fact, Ace Greenberg’s partner at Bear Stearns is still connected and linked into those offshore accounts. So Epstein was very much doing that business, and he was doing that business for Bear Stearns right at the time that Bear Stearns was doing these wild, risky, money-backing things for Donald, for Donald developing his casino.
:{:{So thatis where I found him. And I’m like, “Who’s this Jeffrey Epstein, and what is this?” And then I started looking into Jeffrey Epstein, and I’m like, “My God, everybody’s some kind of sex-trafficking criminal.” He’s not the only one that was tied in with Donald’s business or his financial backing in some way that also was convicted for sex trafficking.}:
There’s another guy named Tevfik Arif, who was a big partner with Donald, who had that yacht with all the underage prostitutes and the trafficking that went on there. There’s a yacht, I think off of Turkey where they were finally caught, he was finally caught. So there’s the folks in Panama: his business partners in Panama were nailed for sex trafficking, international sex trafficking. And the people in Canada: there’s ties in there for his business partners in Trump Toronto and Canada, who were also Russian. The main partner there was the son-in-law of Semion Mogilevich’s business partner and consigliere—Semion Mogilevich being a great big Russian gangster.}:
And then there’s all the Craig Unger reporting on Mogilevich, that Donald was in fact laundering Mogilevich’s money himself. And that’s the man who originally compromised him. So that’s the money. It’s full of sex traffickers and it’s full of Russian gangsters.
GO
So let’s underline again Semion Mogilevich. That’s an important connection because Semion Mogilevich, if I remember correctly, was at one point directly working with Robert Maxwell. That was in one of those books, right?
SK
Correct. In Maxwell’s biography, Mogilevich is named several times. I believe the source for that was Ari Ben-Manashe, a former Israeli intelligence officer who also worked for the Kremlin. But that Robert Maxwell biography—this is Ghislaine Maxwell’s father—outlines Robert Maxwell as a Mossad and a KGB spy. That means that he was an intelligence officer. It looks like he also did—there’s quite an FBI file on him. He probably worked with U.S. intelligence at times, and it looks like he definitely worked for the Queen. He was very close with, very close with the Queen. He touched the Queen. There’s video of him, footage of him touching her, like walking alongside her and touching her like.
GO
He was friends with the Queen. Yeah.
SK
That’s very rare and weird and very strange.
GO
It’s very strange. Robert Maxwell also, when he died in 1991, in November of 1991, by falling off a yacht off the coast of the Canary Islands—as happens, I guess, all the time, so no foul play at all, none suspected; it’s weird how that thread keeps going up—but remember, he had defrauded the pensions of the company, the publishing company that he bought. So he was about to collapse before he died, like his entire...
SK
That’s right.
GO
…financial empire was a house of cards, and it was all bullshit. So that’s an important thing to keep in mind.
SK
That’s right. And he knew Donald. Donald knew him directly. There’s a lot of images and photographs. They were on the yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, that he named after his daughter. So yeah.
GO
They were on the yacht, in Page Six. With Ivana, which is interesting because Robert Maxwell is born Jan Hoch and is from Czechia. And Ivana Trump is also Czech. So I envision a scenario where the two of them are on the yacht talking in Czech, and Trump is just standing there like an idiot.
SK
I’m sure, yeah. Junior, I believe, is fluent in Czech. People underestimate Don Jr.
GO
Yeah, and Baron is fluent in Slovenian, yes.
SK
But you know, another character that was in that world with them, with Robert Maxwell—and it’s important because his money shows up in Jeffrey Epstein’s next big financial scam after the Bear Stearns moving him—is a man named Adnan Khashoggi, who is Jamal Khashoggi’s uncle. And there’s not a lot of Khashoggis, actually, by the way.
Donald knew the Khashoggis very, very, very well. Ivana called Adnan her best friend quite often. When Donald bought the one and only yacht he’s ever bought, he bought Khashoggi’s yacht. So he bought Khashoggi’s, yeah.
And Khashoggi was a known intelligence officer for Saudi Arabia, but he was at one point the wealthiest man in the world.
GO
He was an arms dealer, right? Wasn’t he an arms dealer?
SK
He was a big arms dealer. Yeah.
GO
I remember that, even in the moment, people knew who he was. Like, he wasn’t some hidden figure. I remember reading about him in the 80s. I didn’t know what these people were at the time. But I knew their names.
SK
Paul Manafort was also in this mix, Tom Barrack was in this mix. There were a lot of folks that we saw show up in Trump 1.0 as President, helping with his campaign, that were swirling around in this—what I call the underworld. But it’s where crime syndicates and intelligence services are just, you know, intertwined.
And that’s what MAGA is aware of when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein. They can kind of feel that there’s something odd there. There are intelligence services there.
Now, it’s important to point out that before Robert Maxwell died—there are several people who are credible witnesses and know what they’re talking about that have identified that Robert Maxwell was taking Jeffrey Epstein around and sort of introducing him as his protégé. So this myth—this lie—that Ghislaine and Jeffrey told that he showed up after Ghislaine’s dad died, that she moved to New York and that’s where she met Jeffrey? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. They knew each other before her father died or was killed or whatever happened off the side of that yacht. So that’s kind of key.
And then Jeffrey went from there to creating one of the biggest Ponzi schemes, the biggest Ponzi scheme ever before Bernie Madoff. He almost kind of invented it. That was called Towers Financial. And I talked a lot with Steve Hoffenberg; you talked with him as well. He was a tricky character. He’s passed away now, but he went to prison for quite a long time, and he got out of prison right at the beginning of Trump’s first term. The first person to call him when he was out of prison actually was Roger Stone, he told me.
But Hoffenberg was mortified with what Jeffrey had done with the victims. That reporting had kind of just come out when he was just out of prison. And he did contact the victims, and he did want to kind of make good. Because the money from Towers Financial was never fully recovered, Hoffenberg didn’t understand why he went to prison and Jeffrey got off.
I talked to Hoffenberg a bit. I’m like, “Well, what are some of the ways that someone gets out of being prosecuted for a big crime financial crime like this?” And it looks like Jeffrey very much cooperated with prosecutors. Now, there were a lot of criminals that were part of Towers; that was a big money laundering vehicle. Quite a lot of the money from Iran-Contra, Steve Hoffenberg suspected, was pushed—that Jeffrey got his hands on—it was pushed through Towers.
That is money that Robert Maxwell was in charge of that also disappeared around the time of his pension scandal. And so there was a lot of pressure on Robert Maxwell right before his death. It wasn’t just that his empire was crumbling. There was a lot about to be exposed of the kind of places he’d had his hands in, money that disappeared that he should never have been anywhere near it. And it exposed nation-states, intelligence services, doing what maybe they shouldn’t have been doing.
So that’s the world. It’s like a private intelligence rogue operatives. Private arms dealers like Adnan Khashoggi or the guy that Nicolas Cage played in that movie, Lord of War—like those guys, that world.
There’s also: you don’t have to just deal in arms or traffic in arms. You can traffic in kompromat, right? You can traffic in other things that would have value to intelligence services of both our nation and other nations. And it does very much look like that Robert Maxwell was in that business. It looks like Ghislaine took the mantle, and Jeffrey took the mantle from him and developed their own little operation. So all of the pieces are there for Epstein to have that connection.
And Towers Financial, I think, is also a great big piece that doesn’t get talked about enough, in terms of, What kind of deal did this guy cut with those prosecutors, that he got out of facing prison? And his business partner went in for 20 years, 18 years or whatever.
And knowing the kind of money, the kind of players that Epstein ran with, just with that one fraud and scheme alone—those are very valuable names, and a lot of money that he could have turned over to prosecutors to cut himself a deal. That could very well be the key to Alex Acosta’s phrase about Jeffrey, when he says he was told Epstein “belonged to Intelligence.” Because he would have some really big names in Towers, and really powerful players that maybe were on a sanction list, quite frankly.
GO
So just to review quickly, Towers Financial ran from 1988-1993. He’s now worked, Jeffrey has, as a math teacher at Dalton (where he got fired), at Bear Stearns in some weird capacity (where he got sort of fired). And then he went to work, if I remember correctly, Hoffenberg said Epstein went to work for Douglas Leese, who was another person in that world.
SK
Leese, yes—who was an arms dealer for the Queen. Right.
GO
And he, Leese, according to Hoffenberg, recommended Epstein to Hoffenberg by saying, “He’s smart and he has no moral compass.” So Hoffenberg knew he was going to do this Ponzi scheme, and he needed like a guy to help him with it. And that’s why he hired him. Like, specifically.
SK
And that would have been while Robert Maxwell was still alive or just sort of on his way out to the next world. Yeah. Right. All right around that time.
GO
Right. Again; so now, we’re all the way into the early 90s, and so far it’s money and offshores and arms deals and Russian mobsters and shady characters, but we haven’t even—we haven’t gotten to the sex trafficking part yet, right?
SK
Yeah, as far as we know, it wasn’t happening then. And that’s just—we only know what’s in those court documents, with what the prosecutors brought to light. And a lot of it’s still redacted. But yeah, then he’s setting up, and he’s got Les Wexner, you know, somehow come folding him in.
GO
Les Wexner being the guy that owns Victoria’s Secret and these other big retail chains. And that was the time when Jeffrey was walking around saying he was a model scout for Victoria’s Secret, you know, as a pickup line that he was using.
SK
That’s correct. There is a journalist in the Ohio area, Bob Fitrakis, who’s really good, a great muckraker, and he did a lot of work on Wexner and Wexner’s ties to organized crime. And Wexner as a potential…what’s called a non-official cover, a NOC, for our own intelligence services. Wexner has an airfield there in Ohio, a private airstrip, and there were planes coming in and out of there that Fitrakis believed and tracked to our own intelligence services.
GO
Right, and Wexner’s the guy that owns the lovely, huge mansion on the Upper East Side of New York, on East 73rd, where he’s like, “Why don’t you just live in my mansion? You know? Why don’t you Kato Kaelin this? And you just move in. I don’t need it, it’s fine, it’s good.”
SK
Right. Yeah. To Epstein, yeah, Wexner handed over the most valuable piece of property, the most valuable private residence in Manhattan to Jeffrey—just gave it to him.
GO
Which is, I think, I would say odd, unusual, strange, whatever word you want to use. Weird.
SK
It’s odd.
The other odd thing, and we talked about this this past week a lot, but we kept talking about it at the time, too. We do know that that all of these homes, New York, down in Palm Beach, out in New Mexico, the island and the plane, that these properties that either Jeffrey owned or had access to or were his in some way or form, all had surveillance technology wired throughout them. That’s in the underlying evidence in the court cases against him. So we’re not just speculating about this. It’s in the evidence. And you have to understand that we’re talking about properties that he was using for the—you know, for the abuse, while he abusing these minors and raping the minors.
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epstein-victim-says-ohio-billionaire-les-wexner-engaged-in-sex-acts-with-her
Local News
Epstein victim says Ohio billionaire Les Wexner engaged in sex acts with her
by: Mark Feuerborn
:{Posted: Jan 9, 2024 /
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Documents unsealed Tuesday from cases tied to Jeffrey Epstein, who died while facing federal sex trafficking charges, have named Ohio’s richest person as one of those involved with his victims.
The documents from the 17th Judicial Circuit Court of Florida, tied to a Jan. 16, 2016, deposition of Virginia Roberts Giuffre, show quotes where she directly names L Brands creator Leslie Wexner as one of the “powerful business executives” she was sexually trafficked to.
FILE – This Sept. 19, 2014 file photo shows retail mogul Leslie Wexner, at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jay LaPrete, File)
During direct questioning by attorney Mary Borja, Giuffre confirmed she had sex with Wexner more than three times, but not more than 10. She also described an instance where Epstein’s co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, arranged for Giuffre to wear specific outfits for Wexner.
Additionally, Giuffre described a specific incident in New Mexico where the billionaire was also involved with Sarah Kellen, a member of Epstein’s inner circle who has also described herself as one of Epstein’s victims.
“How do you know that she had sex with Les Wexner?” Borja asked.
“I was there,” Giuffre replied.
“How many times did you and Les Wexner and Sarah Kellen have sex together?” Borja asked.
“Once that I remember,” Giuffre said.
When NBC4 reached out to a spokesperson for Wexner’s family for comment on the newly released documents, they pointed to a statement in his attorneys’ letter to a judge written in 2020.
“Mr. Wexner was unaware of, and was never a participant in, any of the abhorrent behavior engaged in by Epstein against Epstein’s victims,” Wexner’s attorneys wrote. “Mr. Wexner never met Ms. Giuffre … any claims to the contrary were not true.”
FILE – This March 28, 2017, file photo, provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry shows Jeffrey Epstein. (New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP, File)
Epstein met Wexner in the 1980s and became his financial manager, as well as power of attorney later on. The billionaire, who brought Epstein to Ohio for his New Albany transformation project, previously saw mentions in earlier documents released as part of a court order. However, the newly released pages from Giuffre’s testimony are the first time Wexner is named as sexually involved with any of Epstein’s victims.
The previous documents released included a deposition of Maxwell. When investigators asked her if she gave a girl a sexual outfit to wear for Wexner, she replied “categorically no.”
In a memo to L Brands employees, Wexner previously denied having any knowledge of Epstein’s actions, saying he “would not have continued to work with any individual capable of such egregious, sickening behavior as has been reported about him.” Wexner added that he severed ties with the convicted sex offender years prior.
Giuffre’s own attorney, Brad Edwards, also contradicted his client in a 2019 news conference.
“I believe, based on the information that we have accumulated over 11 years, that the statements that he (Mr. Wexner) gave yesterday in the press that he did not know about the sexual proclivities of Mr. Epstein, are very highly likely to be true,” Edwards said. “We have not seen where he is in the company of Jeffrey Epstein at the time when he was engaging in these things. In fact, it’s very seldom that many of the victims actually even met him or saw him.”
In 2008, Wexner’s former financier made a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to charges of prostitution and prostitution involving a minor in Florida. After being arrested again in 2019 on child sex trafficking charges and with new attention on his clientele, Epstein died by apparent suicide in jail.
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Together, the 200 best-compensated C.E.O.s and their spouses gave more than $6.5 million to Republican candidates and groups supporting their campaigns, but less than $1 million to Democratic candidates and groups.
Leslie H. Wexner, chief of the company that owns Victoria’s Secret, along with his wife, Abigail, were the top political donors among those included on the Equilar 200 Highest-Paid C.E.O. Rankings.
Ms. Wexner gave $1.5 million to groups that supported Ohio governor John Kasich’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination. In doing so, she was supporting the hometown candidate: L Brands, the parent company of Victoria’s Secret, is based in Columbus, Ohio. Mr. Wexner gave $500,000 to a group supporting the campaign of Jeb Bush and nearly $100,000 to national Republican committees.
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