The Epstein-Wexner Mystery

What the House Oversight Committee Could Subpoena Next

In the Epstein life drama, it’s tempting to put Ohio native and women’s apparel magnate Leslie H. Wexner in the role of “little buddy.” He’s often portrayed as the dupe of a world-class criminal. But as Wexner toddles into his dotage behind a high hedge of lawyers, and the House Oversight Committee pokes through the detritus of the criminal’s vast career, it behooves the public interest for the Committee to take a look at the original source of Epstein’s wealth.

Wexner is the gremlin beside Epstein’s Dark Lord. The shy midwestern billionaire made his fortune on cheap fashion for American mall-going teenage girls in the 80s, and a decade later, on push-up bras and thongs sexualizing the same cohort of, now, women. For a time, the surest sign of supermodel-dom was a runway strut in stilettos, a Victoria’s Secret bra and underwear, and a pair of gigantic white feathery wings strapped to your naked back.

Eventually we would learn that Epstein added the Victoria’s Secret modeling gig to the lures in his bag of grooming tricks.

Bigger men – bankers, politicians, CEOs – have been exposed in the Epstein story. Some have taken big falls. But we still don’t have the faintest idea why Wexner – defying his own advisors – would hand off power of attorney over a fortune to Epstein just as the inexperienced, uneducated mystery man was building his career as a trafficker of girls to high-level males around the world. Nor do we really know what Epstein did with it.

Wexner was born in Ohio in 1933. His father operated a small women’s clothing store that the son would eventually build into The Limited, for teens thronging malls across America in the 1970s. Two of his relatives were charged with mob-connected crimes in 1930s Chicago, but the Wexners of Ohio were straight – at least until 1991, when young Wexner, now ultra-rich, reportedly was named in an investigation into organized crime. He had become a man with enough dark local power that when one of Epstein’s victims, held by Epstein and Maxwell inside Wexner’s house, called Columbus cops for help, she says someone who answered told her “we work for Wexner.”

Epstein was introduced to Wexner by one of Wexner’s business associates in the late 1980s. In late July 1991 – a month after the investigation into his alleged mob ties – Wexner signed over power of attorney to Epstein, mystifying his own financial advisors.

The year 1991 is significant in more ways than that in the story of the relationship between the midwestern billionaire and the man credibly suspected of having ties to Israeli and other intelligence services. Some of the Wexner-Epstein activities in 1991 that beg for a deeper look from the staff of the House Oversight Committee:

Besides the power of attorney mystery, in March 1991, Epstein became trustee of a $250 million Wexner-funded entity called the Ohio Education Trust that’s not known to have donated to any causes. Epstein was also made trustee of three other obscure trusts. All told, starting in 1991, that’s a half a billion dollars in Wexner mystery trusts controlled by Epstein – none of whose purposes or donations seem to be known.

Shortly before getting Wexner’s power of attorney, Epstein bought his first private jet. Ghislaine Maxwell – who had moved from London to New York in April 1991 and begun hanging out with Epstein soon after – would accompany Epstein on that newly acquired jet countless times, including on at least 25 trips to Columbus in the first year after Epstein bought it, according to flight logs.

In mid-October of 1991, a scandal broke in the UK, involving a Seymour Hersh book reporting that an employee of Robert Maxwell’s Daily Mirror was engaged in arms dealing with associates in – wait for it – Ohio.

Two weeks later, Robert Maxwell was found drowned off his yacht near the Canary Islands.

Wexner was passionate about his Judaism as a child (at age 19 he won an award for an essay called “Why I love and Respect Judaism”) and became one of the most consequential American donors to Israel in the late 20th century. His ties to Israeli military, intelligence and arms dealers were many. Having remained a bachelor into his 50s, in 1993 he married the daughter of Yehuda Koppel, a member of the Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary group operating in Palestine before the founding of Israel. The late Rabbi Herbert Friedman, a founding president of both the Wexner Foundation and the Wexner Heritage Foundation, had a colorful past including arms smuggling and spying.

Like Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, Robert Maxwell, Wexner was a major investor in resettling Soviet Jews and in Israel proper in the years after the fall of the USSR. Wexner was involved in a project called Operation Independence, which aimed to make Israel more economically self-sufficient. A 1986 New York Times profile of Wexner reports his “closed meetings with Ariel Sharon and a clutch of Government officials” in Jerusalem to discuss establishing apparel plants “near the Golan Heights” as joint Limited/Israeli/Chinese ventures. These factories near Palestinian villages employed Arab “girls” to work the sewing machines for Limited products, and by the 1990s, 400 of them were sewing clothes to be sold to American girls in U.S. malls.

In the early 1990s, Wexner started financing a fellows program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, aiming to network and train “the next generation of leaders” in Israel. About 280 individuals went through the project before Wexner yanked funding. In the 1990s, about a third of the fellows were IDF generals and intelligence-connected officers including the head of special forces, brigadier generals, chiefs of Israeli Navy and Air Force, one of whom, Ami Ayalon, headed the Shin Bet after his time at Harvard, and another, Amos Yadlin, headed Aman, Israel’s military intelligence service and the Israeli military attaché to the U.S. (Wexner yanked funding after the October 7 attacks and Harvard student protests.)

All of these activities reflect Wexner’s abiding passion for the Jewish state. But is it also possible that Wexner knew about and/or supported Epstein’s often rumored involvement with Israeli intelligence? Israeli officials have vociferously denied the connection, but years of emails between Epstein and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak suggest at the very least an unofficial – but deep – link. Barak was head of Aman in 1983-1985, the years when Epstein was believed to be working with arms dealers in London.

Wexner has denied knowledge of Epstein’s trafficking crimes and said he regrets handing over power of attorney. An independent, albeit local, Columbus-based law firm hired by Wexner’s foundation in 2020 to investigate Epstein’s involvement between 1992 and 2007, found that he "played no meaningful role in the Foundation's budget, finances or accounting." But many questions remain.

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Join me and Reed Galen as we discuss MAGA and Epstein and why we need to keep talking about the coverup. Reed is a pro-democracy activist,commentator, and an original co-founder of the Lincoln Project. He now serves as president of JoinTheUnion.us, an organization dedicated to rebuilding America’s democratic foundations. He’s worked in national politics for 25 years and his work has been included in most major newspapers. He’s a regular guest on MSNBC, writes The Home Front column on Substack, and hosts a podcast of the same name.