Show Notes
Les Wexner has portrayed himself as one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, claiming Epstein gradually gained his confidence, secured extraordinary control over his personal finances and ultimately misappropriated enormous amounts of Wexner family money. Wexner said the scheme became apparent in 2007, when Epstein’s legal problems in Florida were escalating and Abigail Wexner began examining the family finances more closely. Wexner publicly said Epstein had taken “vast sums,” while information later provided by his attorneys to federal investigators described the amount as several hundred million dollars; Wexner has said at least some of that money was recovered. Roughly $46 million in securities transferred from Epstein-controlled entities to an Abigail Wexner foundation was characterized as only part of the repayment. Wexner’s account was essentially that Epstein had used the sweeping power of attorney entrusted to him to enrich himself, manipulate transactions and exploit a relationship Wexner believed was legitimate. By 2026, Wexner was describing Epstein as an extraordinary con man who had deliberately cultivated his trust before abusing it.
That explanation deserved considerably more skepticism than simply accepting Wexner as another unsuspecting mark. Epstein did not acquire temporary access to Wexner’s affairs; Wexner gave him power of attorney for roughly 16 years and allowed him extraordinary influence over virtually every aspect of his personal financial life, including properties, trusts, philanthropy and major transactions. Epstein’s rise to immense wealth was deeply intertwined with that relationship, and one of the most valuable assets associated with him—his Manhattan townhouse—also originated in Wexner’s financial orbit. Just as importantly, if Wexner discovered in 2007 that a man controlling his fortune had stolen or misappropriated an enormous amount of money, the public record has never produced a particularly satisfying explanation for why such an alleged theft did not immediately result in an aggressive criminal complaint and a public financial reckoning. Wexner was pressed on that point during his 2026 congressional deposition and did not provide a straightforward explanation for why the alleged massive theft was not reported to law enforcement. None of that proved Wexner knowingly participated in Epstein’s crimes, but it made the simple story that he was merely deceived increasingly difficult to accept without serious scrutiny—especially given the length, depth and financial intimacy of a relationship that did more than almost anything else to provide Epstein with the wealth, property and legitimacy he later wielded.
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More from The Epstein Chronicles
Jeffrey Epstein should never have received the 2007 non-prosecution agreement that allowed him to avoid a federal prosecution and instead resolve the case through extraordinarily lenient state charges in Florida. Federal investigators had developed substantial evidence involving numerous underage victims, and yet Epstein received an agreement that not only protected him from federal prosecution but also extended immunity to unnamed potential co-conspirators. Victims were kept in the dark while the agreement was negotiated, and the Justice Department’s own Office of Professional Responsibility later concluded that Alexander Acosta exercised poor judgment in resolving the federal investigation through the NPA and in failing to ensure that victims were properly informed. Whatever legal arguments Epstein’s high-powered defense team made, the result was undeniable: a wealthy, well-connected man accused of sexually abusing numerous minors received treatment that would have been almost unimaginable for an ordinary defendant facing comparable evidence. The secrecy surrounding the agreement, the breadth of the immunity language and the government’s willingness to abandon a potentially much more serious federal prosecution created a credibility problem that has never really gone away.
Ghislaine Maxwell launched her first major appeal of her conviction on February 28, 2023, asking the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn her convictions or grant her a new trial. Her lawyers built the appeal around several arguments they had already raised before and after trial, most prominently that Jeffrey Epstein’s 2007 Non-Prosecution Agreement with federal prosecutors in Florida protected his potential co-conspirators and therefore should have barred the Southern District of New York from prosecuting Maxwell. The defense also argued that some of the charges were outside the applicable statute of limitations and that Maxwell had been denied a fair and impartial jury because one juror failed to disclose during jury selection that he had been sexually abused as a child. Maxwell’s attorneys additionally challenged aspects of Judge Alison Nathan’s jury instructions and sentencing calculations, arguing that errors throughout the proceeding had deprived Maxwell of a fair trial.
Jes Staley told Congress that he warned JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon about Jeffrey Epstein’s legal troubles in both 2006 and 2008, directly contradicting Dimon’s sworn claim that he did not learn Epstein was a bank client until 2019. Staley said the two men discussed the investigations into Epstein and his continued relationship with JPMorgan, placing Dimon much closer to the bank’s handling of the disgraced financier than Dimon has acknowledged. JPMorgan denied that the conversations occurred, leaving Congress with two irreconcilable accounts from former senior executives and raising the question of which man gave false or misleading testimony.
The sealed federal indictment returned against Jeffrey Epstein on July 2, 2019, charged him with sex-trafficking conspiracy and sex trafficking of minors for conduct prosecutors alleged occurred primarily between 2002 and 2005. Prosecutors said Epstein sexually exploited and abused dozens of underage girls at his Manhattan townhouse and Palm Beach residence, with some victims as young as 14. The indictment described a recurring system in which girls were brought to Epstein ostensibly to provide massages, after which the encounters became sexual and Epstein paid them hundreds of dollars in cash. Prosecutors alleged that Epstein knew many of the girls were minors and deliberately maintained a supply of young victims by paying some of them to recruit additional girls. The indictment also alleged that employees and associates helped facilitate the operation by contacting victims, arranging appointments and helping keep Epstein’s residences available for the encounters.
Day five of Tyler Robinson’s preliminary hearing focused heavily on the defense effort to weaken the prosecution’s DNA evidence. The defense called ATF DNA Section Chief Caitlin Oliver, who had performed testing on evidence including the rifle prosecutors said was used to kill Charlie Kirk and a Dremel tool recovered from Robinson’s home. Oliver acknowledged that DNA testing could not establish when or how genetic material had been deposited on an object, that secondary transfer was possible and that some of the evidence contained mixtures from multiple people. She also testified that several samples had been completely consumed during testing, meaning they could not be independently retested in their original form, and confirmed that investigators’ elimination samples had not always been available to rule out possible contamination. Prosecutors countered by emphasizing that the ATF laboratory was accredited, its testing methods were validated and widely accepted, and Oliver’s analysis found evidentiary support for including Robinson as a possible contributor to DNA recovered from numerous areas of the rifle, including the stock, grips, butt plate, trigger, trigger guard, bolt and fore-end. The defense’s point was not that the DNA testing had been fabricated, but that prosecutors had portrayed statistical findings as more definitive than the science itself allowed.