When you’re in search of the quintessential Les Wexner experience, the Jefferson Series could be it. Since 2014, it’s featured renowned architects, best-selling authors, Oscar-nominated actresses, decorated military leaders, a former U.N. ambassador and other outstanding figures in media and politics. The lecture series is a passion project for Wexner, who seems to like nothing greater than reveling in its heady mix of huge ideas, public service, deep considering and philanthropy.
On Oct. 1, 2019, this system launched its seventh season with a typically star-studded affair. Washington Post columnist and CNN host Fareed Zakaria, a Wexner favorite making his fourth Jefferson Series appearance, moderated a panel discussion on China with two former U.S. secretaries of state, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright. Wexner often offers introductory remarks for these lectures, and this one was no different. The 82-year-old L Brands founder refused to let the explosive Jeffrey Epstein scandal—an argument unlike every other Wexner has faced—keep him from a public appearance at certainly one of his favorite Central Ohio events.
Standing before the sold-out crowd of nearly 900 on the McCoy Center for the Arts, Wexner thanked everyone for supporting the series and introduced the speakers. After he returned to his seat, Zakaria acknowledged Wexner and his wife, Abigail. “I first need to thank Les Wexner and everybody involved in putting this together,” he said. “As lots of , this whole idea and this civic engagement has been the brainchild of Les and Abigail, and I believe it’s just so vital to have successful people in America give back to the community in this fashion.” The gang responded with hearty applause.
The nice and cozy response revealed so much about Columbus and its relationship with its strongest citizen. Amid certainly one of the darkest years of Wexner’s public life, his hometown hasn’t turned on him. After many years of excellent works, philanthropy and civic leadership, even a sordid saga of lies, extravagance, sexual assault and impunity hasn’t broken the cocoon of goodwill that surrounds him.
However the saga will not be done.
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That is the Columbus version of Les Wexner: the inspirational builder of certainly one of town’s most vital corporations, the self-made billionaire who gives a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of dollars away to enhance his hometown, the unselfish civic statesman who’s a task model to other leaders, the visionary who built his own suburban Shangri-La in the agricultural flatlands east of Columbus. Now, that is the Epstein scandal version of Wexner: the careless wealthy guy who gave complete control of his fortune to a money manager with a sketchy history, the benefactor whose imprimatur gave an undeserving protégé status and power, the blinkered mentor who described his now-disgraced pal in a 2003 Vanity Fair article as “very smart,” a “most loyal friend” and someone with “excellent judgment and unusually high standards.”
In Columbus, it’s hard to reconcile these two conflicting portraits. How can the identical man be so savvy and so naive, so good and so blind? How could Wexner—who’s avoided scandal all his life and is married to a tireless advocate for youngsters and abused women—associate himself with someone who turned out to be of such questionable character, someone who was arrested in early July 2019 on sex-trafficking charges? Columbus has been forced to grapple with these questions since then, when Wexner emerged as a central figure within the saga of Epstein, who hanged himself in a Recent York City jail cell while facing charges he abused dozens of underage girls, some as young as 14. The subject has dominated conversations, filled social media feeds, spawned wild speculation. It’s been an oh-my-God moment.
Because the Epstein scandal blotted out the sun through the summer, Columbus leaders were disturbed. “The priority was that we didn’t want it to be a priority,” says Lisa Courtice, the CEO of United Way of Central Ohio. “He’s revered and a hero to Columbus, so we’re sad that he has to undergo this and sad for his family. I believe that’s what I heard probably the most. He’s so vital to our history and our future. We just don’t want it to affect our city.”
Indeed, a giant public reckoning is unlikely. Columbus Monthly contacted greater than two dozen local leaders in politics, business, the nonprofit sector and the civic realm, and just about all declined to discuss Wexner on the record or didn’t reply to messages. (Wexner also declined to be interviewed for this story.) And those that did talk were almost uniformly supportive of Wexner.
You have got to go a good distance down town’s power structure to search out someone willing to criticize Wexner’s connections to Epstein on the record. “Columbus as an entire will not be OK with this,” says Liliana Rivera Baiman, an underdog candidate for Columbus City Council whose status as a sexual assault survivor inspired her partially to talk out. She is anxious that probably the most powerful person in town was related to a sexual predator, desires to know more about their financial and private relationship and needs to carry Wexner accountable if wrongdoing is discovered. Mostly, she desires to have a loud, public conversation.
To make certain, she’s not Wexner’s only public critic. There are many dark takes on Wexner, especially outside of Columbus and within the cynical, conspiracy-fueled world of social media. However the Columbus establishment is a unique story. For example, all of Rivera Baiman’s incumbent opponents—Councilmembers Elizabeth Brown, Emmanuel Remy, Shayla Favor and Rob Dorans—declined to comment for this text. “I believe persons are afraid of bringing it up,” Rivera Baiman says.
Meanwhile, Wexner’s backers praise him for his integrity and accept his explanations: that he knew nothing about Epstein’s sex crimes, that he’s embarrassed and ashamed by his association with the disgraced financier, that he “regrets having ever crossed his path.” His early trust in Epstein might baffle a few of these supporters, but in addition they sympathize together with his plight. They are saying he’s an optimist, trusting by nature, and that could make him a simple mark for a master swindler like Epstein. Wexner deserves our support, they are saying, not our scorn.
“Les Wexner is so well-respected,” says Curt Steiner, the veteran political operative and former Ohio State senior vp of communications. “Something like this may raise eyebrows, however it’s not going to vary the extent of respect people have for him. Les Wexner goes to be given the advantage of the doubt.”
“Those of us who know him best know of his unwavering ethics, his moral compass, his unselfish commitment to Columbus,” says Alex Fischer, the CEO of the Columbus Partnership, town’s strongest civic organization, which is chaired by Wexner. “He’s been certainly one of the people in my life who’s been the usual of community engagement, and I don’t think anything in the summertime’s events have modified that.”
A divorce from Wexner is improbable, almost unimaginable. How could town cut ties with someone who is actually the daddy of contemporary Columbus, someone whose last name is plastered on buildings and institutions throughout town, from COSI to Ohio State to Nationwide Children’s Hospital?
“Les and Abigail each have earned a unprecedented reservoir of goodwill that’s going to outweigh the negative fallout that he’s needed to endure up to now,” says Mike Curtin, the previous state representative and ex-associate publisher of The Columbus Dispatch. Speaking in early September, Curtin says that he hasn’t seen any revelations up to now pointing to Wexner’s culpability in Epstein’s misdeeds. “I think we’ve seen the worst of it,” Curtin says. “I hope we’ve seen the worst of it.”
Yet the Epstein saga plays on. As of late 2019, books are within the works, as is a Netflix docuseries. A movie seems inevitable, and the courts aren’t through with Epstein despite his death. Federal prosecutors in Recent York are continuing to analyze, specializing in Epstein’s former associates, and several other Epstein victims are suing his estate, valued at greater than $500 million. The media continues to give attention to Wexner, including a serious Washington Post story published in early October 2019 that tied him and Abigail more on to a previously alleged 1996 Epstein sexual assault in Recent Albany. And Wexner could find yourself a serious figure in an Epstein-related clash of legal titans that’s playing out in each the courts and the media—a dispute between famed attorneys David Boies and Alan Dershowitz.
Wexner’s protective Columbus cocoon might need some reinforcements.
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Since Epstein’s arrest in early July 2019, Wexner has been the main target of a media feeding frenzy. The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Recent York Times, Bloomberg and more have descended on Columbus, with reporters inundating Wexner’s friends, former work associates and acquaintances with phone calls. The eye—probably the most brutal coverage of Wexner’s life, made worse by the cultural backlash that was already roiling Victoria’s Secret, L Brands’ signature enterprise—peaked on July 25, 2019, when the Times and the Journal concurrently published deep dives on Wexner and Epstein. One Wexner friend declined to talk on the record to Columbus Monthly, fearing that public comments might result in much more calls from reporters. “I don’t have time for that,” the friend says.
Because of all that reporting, a striking portrait of Epstein has emerged: Wexner’s man within the shadows, his “international moneyman of mystery,” as Recent York Magazine dubbed him. For his only publicly known client, Epstein was greater than only a financial adviser. He oversaw the development of Wexner’s 316-foot superyacht, Limitless. He joined the board of the Wexner Foundation, the tycoon’s charitable arm, replacing Wexner’s mother, Bella, who died in 2001. With the assistance of Wexner, Epstein became a jet-setter in his own right. He bought a company plane from the Limited, then the name of L Brands, in addition to a seven-floor home in Recent York, the biggest private residence in Manhattan, from Wexner. Epstein even purchased a ten,000-square-foot home (originally intended for Wexner’s friend, Recent Albany Co. chairman Jack Kessler) for $3.5 million on the grounds that surround Wexner’s own mansion in Recent Albany.
Following months of media scrutiny, here’s a field guide to what Columbus Monthly and other outlets have learned about Epstein, Wexner and their skilled and private relationship, in addition to what questions remain unanswered.
The Origins: Wexner appears to have met Epstein within the mid-Eighties. A source says Robert Meister, a former Aon insurance executive and a friend of Wexner, introduced Wexner to Epstein, who also received endorsements from Bear Stearns CEO Jimmy Cayne and his predecessor, Alan “Ace” Greenberg. “Mr. Epstein represented that he had various well-known and revered individuals each as his financial clients and in his inner circle,” Wexner wrote in an Aug. 8 statement posted on the web site of the Wexner Foundation. “Based on positive reports from several friends, and on my initial dealings with him, I believed I could trust him.”
Still, plenty of individuals questioned Wexner’s judgment from the beginning. Epstein, who owned his own wealth management firm after working as a Bear Stearns trader, was a university dropout and a former math teacher at a Manhattan private school with a skimpy resume despite his high-profile references. “It’s a weird relationship,” an anonymous Wall Streeter told Recent York Magazine in 2002. “It’s just not normal for somebody of such enormous wealth to swiftly give his money to some guy most individuals have never heard of.”
Calling Bob Morosky: Columbus hasn’t heard so much from Wexner’s former top lieutenant of late, but he was a frequent interview through the aftermath of Epstein’s arrest. Morosky didn’t return Columbus Monthly’s calls, but he did speak to The Recent York Times, The Wall Street Journal and others, delivering a few of the most biting comments about Epstein and Wexner. “I attempted to learn the way did he get from a highschool math teacher to a non-public investment adviser,” the previous chief financial officer and vice chairman told The Times. “There was nothing there.”
Epstein’s connections apparently intrigued Wexner. Morosky said his boss told him that Epstein could “introduce him to vital people.” Morosky spent 15 years with the Limited before resigning in 1987. “Les is an insecure guy with a giant ego. … He had a variety of money but craved respect,” Morosky told The Wall Street Journal. “They played off one another’s needs.”
Power of Attorney: Many observers have zeroed in on Wexner’s decision to grant Epstein power of attorney in 1991, allowing him to borrow money, write checks, buy real estate and more on his behalf. An influence-of-attorney agreement is “common in that context,” Wexner wrote in his Aug. 8 statement, stating that it gave him more time to give attention to his business and philanthropic efforts. Indeed, one other wealthy Central Ohio resident agrees, saying such arrangements are common for high-net-worth individuals with complicated funds who need assistance managing their assets. “I’ve done that before,” the Central Ohio resident says, comparing it to knowledgeable athlete who hires a private manager to permit him to give attention to his sport.
Near Home: One in all the earliest reports of a sexual assault committed by Epstein occurred in 1996 in his Recent Albany home, which he sold for $8 million in 1998. In a court affidavit and an interview with The Recent York Times, Maria Farmer, an artist who worked for Epstein, says he and his friend Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of the late British press baron Robert Maxwell, assaulted her in a bedroom in the house, twisting her nipples to the purpose of bruising. Fearing she was going to be raped, Farmer fled the room, The Times reported. Epstein had invited Farmer to spend the summer in the house while she worked on two large-scale paintings commissioned for the movie “As Good as It Gets” starring Jack Nicholson.
Farmer told The Washington Post she holds Wexner “answerable for what happened to me.” She pointed to Wexner’s close ties to Epstein, in addition to the responsibility of his security team to observe the property, positioned on the grounds of the Wexner estate a couple of half-mile away from his mansion. Farmer also said Wexner’s security officers held her against her will for about 12 hours following the assault until her father arrived from Kentucky to choose her up.
A Wexner spokesman told the Post the Wexners were unaware of the alleged attack: “Before the recent news coverage of Ms. Farmer, Mr. and Mrs. Wexner had no knowledge of her, never met her, never spoke together with her and never spoke with Mr. Epstein or anyone else about her.”
Epstein and Victoria’s Secret: Then there’s Alicia Arden, a California model who says Epstein assaulted her in a Santa Monica hotel room. Posing as a talent scout for Victoria’s Secret, Epstein invited Arden to his hotel for an audition. When she arrived, he grabbed her and tried to undress her, saying he desired to “manhandle” her, Arden said in an interview with The Recent York Times. What’s more, The Times reported Wexner was told within the mid-Nineteen Nineties that Epstein was attempting to sell himself as a recruiter for Victoria’s Secret models, in keeping with two executives on the time.
The L Brands board has hired a law firm to analyze Epstein’s role with the corporate, though a spokeswoman has said she believes he was never employed by the corporate or served as a certified representative.
Mysterious Money: In January 2008, Epstein transferred $47 million from his company and his own foundation to at least one created a couple of month earlier by Abigail Wexner. The transfer occurred a number of months after the Wexners severed ties with Epstein following his indictment on sex charges in Florida in September 2007. This payment raised loads of eyebrows when The Columbus Dispatch reported it in July. Why would Abigail accept money from an accused pedophile she and her husband just fired?
The reply got here in August, when Les revealed that in the autumn of 2007, he discovered that Epstein had taken “vast sums of cash from me and my family.” The $47 million donation was actually a partial repayment for the misappropriated funds, Wexner said in his Aug. 8 statement. “All of that cash—every dollar—was originally Wexner family money,” Wexner wrote. “I’m embarrassed that, like so many others, I used to be deceived by Mr. Epstein. I do know now that my trust in him was grossly misplaced.”
Ohio State has also been drawn into this controversy. Following Epstein’s July 2019 arrest, the university discovered two gifts connected to the disgraced financier: $1,000 to the Wexner Center for the Arts Membership Fund in 1990 and $2.5 million in May 2007 to the Woody Hayes Athletic Center. The athletic center gift was done together with an identical contribution from the Leslie H. Wexner Charitable Fund. The cash fulfilled a pledge that led to the naming of the Les Wexner Football Complex, a surprise seventieth birthday gift to Les from Abigail in 2007.
In early October 2019, Ohio State was still reviewing its records for every other gifts from Epstein. The review is predicted to complete soon. The university hasn’t decided what it can do with the tarnished money, however it could donate equivalent funds to charity. “Les and Abigail Wexner have been great community leaders and supporters of Ohio State for a few years,” Ohio State president Michael Drake said in an announcement provided to Columbus Monthly. “They’ve done a lot to uplift each the university and town of Columbus, and we sincerely appreciate their ongoing service and support. I proceed to depend on Les and Abigail as valued partners and friends.”
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What’s the subsequent chapter for Wexner within the Epstein saga? Perhaps a court date with certainly one of the country’s most famous (and outspoken) attorneys. Alan Dershowitz, the retired Harvard law professor, was certainly one of the primary celebrities to be accused of participating in Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring. Now, the onetime member of O.J. Simpson’s legal dream team is waging a scorched-earth campaign within the courts and within the media to clear his name—and Wexner stands out as the key to his defense.
It’s a convoluted story, however the gist of Dershowitz’s argument is that he wasn’t the actual goal of his accuser, Virginia Roberts Giuffre. He was merely a “stalking horse,” and Giuffre and her attorney—David Boies, a fellow legal luminary who represented Al Gore through the 2000 Florida recount—were really after Wexner and his riches. For about 4 years, Dershowitz has made this extortion claim in court filings and in media interviews. But interest has increased since Giuffre filed a defamation lawsuit against Dershowitz in April 2019, and the FBI arrested Epstein three months later.
Dershowitz tells Columbus Monthly his legal team intends to feature Wexner if a trial moves forward, which could occur in a couple of 12 months. “He’s some of the critical witnesses for my trial,” Dershowitz says. Other witnesses could include Abigail and John Zeiger, the Wexner family’s Columbus attorney. At issue is a series of phone calls and one face-to-face meeting that occurred in 2015 between Giuffre’s lawyers and Zeiger. Dershowitz says he spoke to Abigail and Zeiger, and each used the word “shakedown” to explain Boies’ tactics prior to the face-to-face meeting that occurred on the attorney’s Recent York law offices in July 2015.
The court proceedings could prove unpleasant for Wexner. Dershowitz and his legal team need to know what was discussed through the phone calls and the meeting, in hopes they are going to discover something that can undermine the claims of Giuffre, potentially dragging Wexner through the mud. “I hate to be doing this,” says Dershowitz, who attended Wexner’s 59th party in 1996 on the invitation of Epstein and taught Wexner’s son Harry at Harvard. “I like Leslie Wexner. He’s done an unlimited amount of excellent to the world, to the Jewish community, for Israel, for Harvard. But the reality has to return out.”
Boies didn’t reply to a request for comment, but in a court affidavit, he denied the extortion claim, adding that no settlement demand was made and even discussed with Wexner or his attorney. A source near Wexner also says there was no extortion.
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Because the Epstein story engulfed Wexner, some Columbus leaders nervous town might overreact. What if protests occur? What if names are faraway from buildings? What if town turns its back on its most influential family? If that were to occur, the considering goes, then the Wexners might surrender on town. “That might be probably the most horrible thing that may ever occur to Columbus,” says a business leader.
That scenario hasn’t occurred. And civic leaders say Wexner stays just as engaged as ever. In early September 2019, he joined 75 community leaders—60 CEOs, plus public officials equivalent to Columbus Mayor Andy Ginther and Franklin County Commissioner Marilyn Brown—for the Columbus Partnership’s annual two-day retreat in Boston. Hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School, the retreat featured big-picture planning, small-group discussions and high-profile guest speakers, including biographer Walter Isaacson and The Recent York Times’ Beijing bureau chief Jane Perlez.
The conversations were spirited, enthusiastic and difficult—and 4 attendees say Wexner was in the course of it, as at all times: listening intently, asking questions, learning alongside his fellow CEOs. Wexner didn’t discuss Epstein, nor did anyone ask him to. “His work locally, his work in his company, the work of his family—those are his loves,” says a Partnership member, adding with fun, “He doesn’t golf.”
Because the retreat closed, Wexner gave his traditional benediction: He thanked all for his or her commitment and participation, stressing that Columbus owes the success of the past decade to leaders “committed to being within the room.”
Will Wexner remain within the room? Or, more specifically, at the pinnacle of the table? Those 4 attendees are in agreement: He’s not going anywhere—despite his advancing age, despite the troubles at Victoria’s Secret, despite Epstein.
“It’s the identical Les,” one says.
This story is from the November 2019 issue of Columbus Monthly.