Hiya!
Happy Friday. Let’s chat the Wexner file which starts in Ohio, with an old billionaire in a chair and a lawyer who forgets the microphone is still on.
Les Wexner, founder of The Limited and the retail empire that gave America Victoria’s Secret, Bath & Body Works, Abercrombie & Fitch, and a whole mall-sized fantasy of consumption, sat for nearly five hours of questioning before the House Oversight Committee in February 2026. The subject was Jeffrey Epstein. The deposition took place at Wexner’s New Albany, Ohio mansion, and the committee later released video of the interview. [1]
The room was controlled, careful, and lawyered to within an inch of its life. Then Wexner kept answering.
Too much, apparently.
His lawyer, Michael Levy, leaned toward him and whispered the sentence that should be carved over the entrance to America’s elite accountability machine: “I will fucking kill you if you answer another question with more than five words.” [2]
Wexner laughed. The deposition continued. The clip went viral because it accidentally explained the entire Epstein universe better than any press release ever could. The rule was simple: keep it short, keep it small, keep it contained.
Five words or less.
That is where the Wexner story belongs to begin, because Les Wexner is not a decorative rich man in the Epstein saga. He is one of the central doors. He is the money door, the respectability door, the Ohio billionaire door, the Victoria’s Secret door, and the real estate door. He is the man whose fortune and trust helped transform Jeffrey Epstein from a strange former math teacher with vague Wall Street credentials into a man who looked, from the outside, like someone powerful people could safely know.
Wexner has long said he was deceived by Epstein. In his deposition, he called Epstein a “world-class con man” and denied knowing about Epstein’s criminal activity. He said he had been naive, that Epstein stole from him, and that he cut ties with Epstein years earlier. [3] That may be his legal defense and his personal story. But the public is allowed to ask a different question: what kind of world allows a man like Epstein to become credible in the first place?
Because Epstein did not build a normal business. He did not create a product, take a company public, become a famous investor with a transparent track record, or explain his fortune in a way that made sense to ordinary people. His wealth story was fog. When reporters tried to understand how a former teacher became a private-jet billionaire with presidents, princes, professors, scientists, lawyers, models, and moguls in his orbit, they kept arriving back at Wexner. Vanity Fair described Epstein in 2003 as a financier whose clients were billionaires, “most notably” Leslie Wexner, and whose life was wrapped in mystery, luxury, and elite access. [4]
Wexner was not merely one of Epstein’s contacts. He was, for years, Epstein’s most important client and patron. Epstein served as his financial adviser. In 1991, Wexner granted Epstein power of attorney, giving him extraordinary authority over Wexner’s financial life. Business Insider, summarizing New York Times reporting, described Epstein as having near-total control over Wexner’s finances, including the ability to hire people, sign checks, buy and sell property, and borrow money on Wexner’s behalf. [5]
That is access to the vault.
It is difficult to overstate how strange this arrangement looks from the outside. A billionaire who built one of the most recognizable retail empires in America gave enormous control to a man whose own financial credentials were opaque. Epstein’s later mythology depended on people believing he was a financial genius. Wexner’s trust helped make that mythology believable. If Les Wexner trusted him, then Epstein must be real. If Epstein was handling Wexner’s money, then Epstein must be someone. If Epstein lived like a billionaire, traveled like a billionaire, donated like a billionaire, and stood near billionaires, then the world treated him like a billionaire.
The credibility mattered. Predators survive on borrowed legitimacy. They need powerful names floating around them. They need doors that open because someone else’s reputation greased the hinges. They need staff who assume someone else already checked. They need bankers, lawyers, assistants, executives, pilots, academics, philanthropists, and politicians to treat their presence as normal.
Wexner gave Epstein that normalcy.
The most grotesque symbol of that access may be the Manhattan townhouse at 9 East 71st Street, the Herbert N. Straus House. This was not just another luxury home on the Upper East Side. It has been widely described as the largest private residence in Manhattan. [4] Wexner bought the property in 1989 through a company he owned, and Epstein later occupied it. ABC News reported that Epstein told The New York Times in 1996 that “Les never spent more than two months there” and boasted that he had acquired the property. [6] Epstein took full possession in 1998, paying Wexner $20 million for the mansion. [7]
That house became part of the Epstein image: the black door, the private rooms, the art, the money, the silence, the sense that whatever happened inside was happening beyond ordinary law. When federal agents searched it in 2019, the townhouse became one of the most recognizable physical symbols of the case. It was real estate as theater. It told visitors, victims, staff, and fellow elites that Epstein was a man of enormous means. The house helped him look untouchable.
Real estate is infrastructure. So are planes, estates, introductions, foundations, and brands.
And this is where Victoria’s Secret becomes central.
Wexner bought Victoria’s Secret in 1982 for about $1 million and turned it into a cultural machine. Time described how Wexner transformed the company into a billion-dollar brand, building a fantasy around lingerie, glamour, and the “Angels” image that shaped American ideas about beauty and desirability for decades. [8]
Victoria’s Secret sold underwear, but it also sold a version of womanhood designed through the eyes of power. The brand taught America to associate beauty with thinness, youth, performance, discipline, and male approval wrapped in pink satin. It turned models into “angels” and shopping malls into little temples of sexual aspiration. For girls and young women, Victoria’s Secret was more than a store. It was a signal. It said: this is what being wanted looks like.
That signal had value. Epstein appears to have understood that.
Epstein never officially worked for Victoria’s Secret, according to the company. But he was accused of using the brand’s name as bait. Time reported that Epstein was accused of posing as a Victoria’s Secret recruiter or talent scout, and that model Alicia Arden filed a police report in 1997 alleging Epstein invited her to a Santa Monica hotel room while presenting himself as connected to Victoria’s Secret. [8] Arden later said publicly that Epstein told her he was a scout for the Victoria’s Secret catalog and asked her to come to his hotel room to review her portfolio. [9]
That allegation points to the sick usefulness of the brand. “Victoria’s Secret” could make a meeting sound like opportunity. It could turn a hotel room into a supposed audition. It could make a young woman think the door opening in front of her led to work, money, glamour, escape, or a new life.
That is the trap inside the fantasy. A predator does not need to own the brand if he can borrow its glow.
The Wexner defense, broadly, has been that Epstein fooled him. Wexner said he cut ties with Epstein around 2007 and later claimed Epstein had misappropriated large sums from him. In a 2019 letter to his foundation community, Wexner said he was “sickened” by Epstein’s conduct and ashamed that his trust had been so misplaced. [10]
That statement may be emotionally sincere. It also opens the central question wider.
If Epstein stole vast sums from one of the richest and most powerful businessmen in America, why did that not destroy Epstein sooner? Why did the alleged theft not become a public legal war? Why did the reckoning come only after so much harm had already been done? In 2020, ABC News reported that Wexner had disclosed a $46 million transfer from Epstein to a foundation run by Abigail Wexner, describing it as only part of the funds recovered from Epstein. [6]
Wexner’s story asks us to hold two claims at once: Epstein was close enough to receive extraordinary authority, property access, reputation, and financial trust, but not close enough for Wexner to understand the danger around him. That may be legally possible. It is morally unsatisfying.
The public does not have to prove Wexner committed Epstein’s crimes to ask whether his power helped make those crimes easier to hide. Wexner has not been criminally charged in connection with Epstein’s trafficking crimes and has denied knowledge of them. [3] But legal guilt is not the only form of accountability that matters in a democracy. There is also institutional accountability. Cultural accountability. The accountability of the people whose money, silence, brands, houses, and social networks created the conditions where a predator could operate.
The Wexner story is not only about one billionaire and one monster. It is about the American habit of treating rich men’s judgment as genius until the damage becomes impossible to deny. If Wexner knew more than he has said, that is one kind of failure. If he truly knew almost nothing while giving Epstein that much authority and access, that is another kind of failure. Neither version inspires confidence in billionaire rule.
This is also why the Victoria’s Secret part cannot be treated as a side plot. The brand was a machine for manufacturing desire and sorting women by market value. The Epstein allegations lived in the same atmosphere: modeling, beauty, youth, access, travel, parties, private rooms, older men, money, and the promise that proximity to power might change a young woman’s life. Epstein did not invent that atmosphere. He exploited it.
Power loves to describe exploitation as misunderstanding. A bad vibe becomes a rumor. A warning becomes gossip. A young woman becomes unreliable. A pattern becomes coincidence. A brand becomes innocent because the harm happened one room away from the official paperwork. Everyone important claims they were fooled, confused, embarrassed, distant, misled, or unaware.
That is how the system protects itself. Not necessarily through one grand conspiracy, but through a thousand useful silences.
Wexner’s Ohio deposition matters because the hot mic gave the public a rare unscripted glimpse of that culture. Some coverage framed the lawyer’s line as frustration or dark humor. Maybe it was. But it resonated because it sounded like the governing logic of the whole Epstein file. Say less. Narrow the answer. Contain the record. Keep the powerful man from wandering into the larger truth.
The larger truth is that Jeffrey Epstein did not become Jeffrey Epstein alone. He needed money to look legitimate. He needed homes to create mystique. He needed famous names to create trust. He needed brands and social circles that made access to young women seem normal. He needed men around him who valued discretion more than clarity. He needed institutions willing to call obvious warning signs complicated.
Les Wexner may not have created Jeffrey Epstein. But Wexner helped make Epstein possible.
He made him look real.
He made him look rich.
He made him look connected.
He gave him access to a billionaire’s world, and that world gave Epstein the one thing every predator needs before he can get away with anything: permission to enter the room.
Decades later, in Ohio, the rule was still the same.
Five words or less.
But the public deserves more than five words. The victims deserve more than five words. And any country that still pretends billionaires are naturally fit to run our institutions, universities, charities, political systems, brands, and private worlds needs to sit with the Wexner file until the lesson lands.
The danger is not only the monster.
The danger is the man who opens the door, calls it trust, and then tells us he had no idea what walked through.
References
[1] WOSU, “U.S. House Oversight Committee releases video of Les Wexner’s deposition concerning Epstein,” February 19, 2026.
https://www.wosu.org/politics-government/2026-02-19/u-s-house-oversight-committee-releases-video-of-les-wexners-deposition-concerning-epstein
[2] New York Post, “Les Wexner’s attorney caught on hot mic saying he’ll ‘f–king kill’ ex-Victoria’s Secret CEO during Jeffrey Epstein probe deposition,” February 20, 2026.
https://nypost.com/2026/02/20/us-news/les-wexners-attorney-caught-on-hot-mic-saying-hell-fking-kill-the-ex-victorias-secret-ceo-during-jeffrey-epstein-probe-deposition/
[3] The Guardian, “Billionaire Les Wexner testifies before Congress about ties to Epstein,” February 18, 2026.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/18/les-wexner-jeffrey-epstein-congress
[4] Vanity Fair, “The Talented Mr. Epstein,” March 2003.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2003/03/jeffrey-epstein-200303
[5] Business Insider, “Victoria’s Secret billionaire Les Wexner reportedly gave Jeffrey Epstein near-total control of his finances,” July 26, 2019.
https://www.businessinsider.com/victorias-secret-wexner-gave-power-of-attorney-to-epstein-report-2019-7
[6] ABC News, “Billionaire businessman Leslie Wexner refuses to reveal full scope of Epstein financial dealings,” January 2020.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/billionaire-businessman-leslie-wexner-refuses-reveal-full-scope/story?id=68461262
[7] ABC News, “Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse sells for approximately $51 million,” March 2021.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/jeffrey-epsteins-manhattan-townhouse-sells-approximately-51-million/story?id=76371810
[8] Time, “The True Story Behind Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons,” July 2022.
https://time.com/6197975/victorias-secret-angels-and-demons-hulu-true-story/
[9] Spectrum News, “Alicia Arden says Epstein ‘manhandled’ her in Santa Monica,” November 2025.
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/ca/california/crime/2025/11/18/actress-model-alicia-arden-says-epstein-manhandled-her-in-santa-monica-in-1997
[10] The Wexner Foundation, “Letter from Les,” July 2019.
https://www.wexnerfoundation.org/letter-from-les/