A Convenient Death
The Mysterious Demise
of Jeffrey Epstein
by Alana Goodman &
Daniel Halper
12
The Politician
Bill Clinton’s Active Retirement
He had information on Bill Clinton & now he’s dead. I see #TrumpBodyCount trending but we know who did this!
A RETWEET FROM DONALD
TRUMP, AUGUST 10, 2019
Jeffrey Epstein was fascinated by Bill Clinton’s Oval Office sex scandal. He told friends he was
perplexed at why the president would throw away his reputation to carry on an affair with Monica
Lewinsky, a woman who Epstein believed was too unattractive to sleep with. On a trip to Africa with
Clinton, Epstein finally got his answer.
During the flight, while Clinton was still on the plane, one good friend remembers receiving a phone
call from a highly amused Epstein. “Guess what I learned?” Epstein asked his somewhat befuddled
friend, according to an interview.
“What?”
“I never understood the whole Monica Lewinsky thing, so I asked,” said Epstein. “Bill’s answer
was, ‘The government shutdown. She was the only girl at the White House!’”
Epstein’s connections to the Clintons were long-standing and have been the source of intense
speculation. Why did that powerful couple put up with Epstein despite his misdeeds?
The Clinton-Epstein connection first became known on September 21, 2002, when they traveled to
Africa together. Flying high on Epstein’s Boeing 727, along with Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker, the two
really got to know each other. They visited Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Mozambique, and South Africa.
The 2002 trip would serve as a coming-out party of sorts for Epstein, resulting in Page Six items in the
New York Post and a monster puff piece in New York magazine. Titled “Jeffrey Epstein: International
Moneyman of Mystery,” the New York article by Landon Thomas Jr. asked, “Who in the world is Jeffrey
Epstein?”
2 The question was asked because, well, no one really knew who this guy was.
The article would be a seminal piece—defining him by his money, access, and predilection for young
women. It was there where Donald Trump made his now infamous quotation stating, “I’ve known Jeff for
fifteen years. Terrific guy . . . He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as
much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social
life.”
Of course that aspect of his life would go unexplored for years to come. Instead, the focus at the time
would be on his profession and his big heart. (Both things the author would basically get wrong.)
“What attracted Clinton to Epstein was quite simple: He had a plane (he has a couple, in fact—the
Boeing 727, in which he took Clinton to Africa, and, for shorter jaunts, a black Gulfstream, a Cessna 421,
and a helicopter to ferry him from his island to St. Thomas). Clinton had organized a weeklong tour of
South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, and Mozambique to do what Clinton does. So when the
president’s advance man Doug Band pitched the idea to Epstein, he said sure. As an added bonus, Kevin
Spacey, a close friend of Clinton’s, and actor Chris Tucker came along for the ride,” the article stated.
“While Epstein got an intellectual kick out of engaging African finance ministers in theoretical chitchat
about economic development, the real payoff for him was observing Clinton in his métier: talking
HIV/aids policy with African leaders and soaking up the love from Cape Town to Lagos.”
—
When Bill Clinton left the White House, he did so as a broken man. Though he remained popular, he was
an impeached ex-president who had, by some measures, squandered his credibility as leader of the free
world by chasing a young intern, instead of focusing on the policy platform that got him elected and then
reelected by historically slim margins.
At fifty-four years old, Clinton was still young. He was not ready to retire to the golf course or stay
home alone as his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, served the people of New York as its junior senator. But
he was also toxic.
The 2000 election was deeply humiliating—and not solely because his vice president, Al Gore, lost in
a direct rebuke to Clinton and his impeachment. Worse, Clinton was not wanted on the campaign trail. The
master politician who had redefined the Democratic Party was a pariah. Few wanted to be seen with him
or near him. And that was before his last-minute pardons of family and friends that Republicans would
savage for years to come.
Clinton was depressed for the first few months after moving to Chappaqua, New York. He was living
outside government housing for the first time in nearly two decades. Restoring his image was his top
priority, and so he focused his attention on his presidential library, the Clinton Foundation, and later the
Clinton Global Initiative. But he also focused on getting paid.
He was, after all, broke. The legal bills he faced from the impeachment process landed him millions
of dollars in debt, and he needed to pay up. His position was made more difficult by the fact that he lost
his law license as a result of a settlement he reached on the sexual harassment claim levied against him by
Paula Jones.
Privately, he also worried about building up enough money to take care of his family’s legacy. Men in
Clinton’s family tended to die young, and he worried he would follow this trend.
“The next two or three years, I want to spend roughly half my time making money,” Clinton told his
longtime friend Taylor Branch during one of their last conversations at the White House on January 8,
2001.
3 “I’m coming off two terms, a two-term presidency with high public ratings, and rating still rising,
and contacts all over the world . . . I know where to find this money, I think I can find it, so that’s what I
want to do.”
So he sought opportunity—and people—who could help solve his problems. Enter Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein’s early forays into politics coincided with the rise of Clinton’s political star. In the 1992
election cycle, he gave $2,000 to the charismatic young Arkansas governor in his successful effort to
unseat George H. W. Bush, according to federal election disclosure records. But he also gave $1,000 to
Bush, perhaps a sign that he was not as interested in ideology as he was in access.
John Glenn, the Democratic senator from Ohio, received decent donations too. On one of those $1,000
donations Epstein listed his employer as Limited Inc., one of the brands owned by his friend and patron,
Leslie Wexner.
He also gave to Bob Packwood, where he listed his employer as Wexner Investments. Packwood, a
Republican senator from Oregon, would soon resign his Senate seat in the wake of detailed sexual assault
and harassment allegations. Epstein would also give to Eliot Spitzer, though much later, who as governor
of New York would resign after it was revealed he had frequented high-end prostitutes.
In sum, Epstein is believed to have given $184,276 directly to politicians, with a heavy lean toward
Democrats ($147,426 versus $18,250 to Republicans, with the rest going to independents).
4 Many
hundreds of thousands more went to other party functions and fund-raisers.
With the slew of donations, access came easily. Around 1993, Epstein donated $10,000 to the White
House Historical Association, contributing to the Clintons’ efforts to redecorate the residence with gold
drapes and other lavish decor. In return, Epstein received a perfunctory thank-you letter from the
association and an invitation to a donor reception with the Clintons. He brought Ghislaine Maxwell as his
date, according to White House records obtained by the Daily Beast. That reception was the first known
meeting between Epstein, Maxwell, and the Clintons.
5
But his real introduction to Clinton, according to one of Epstein’s former lawyers, was through Lynn
Forester, a striking blond telecom executive and New York socialite who later married into the
Rothschild family. Forester was in her early forties at the time and newly divorced from her second
husband, the New York City councilman Andrew Stein. She was smitten with Epstein and became an
evangelist for his financial services, introducing him to her elite circle of friends.
So it was no surprise that when Forester had a chance to talk to Clinton during a dinner at Senator Ted
Kennedy’s house in 1995, the two ended up chatting about Epstein instead of the social policy she had
intended to discuss.
“It was a pleasure to see you,” Forester told Clinton in a 1995 letter.
6 “Using my fifteen seconds of
access to discuss Jeffrey Epstein and currency stabilization, I neglected to talk to you about a topic near
and dear to my heart. Namely, affirmative action and the future.” Clearly she thought enough of Epstein to
relegate her personal “near and dear” topics to the follow-up, rather than the actual conversation, in order
to sing his praises.
Epstein was also cultivating other members of Clinton’s inner circle around the same time. Also in
1995, a dinner was held at the Palm Beach home of Ron Perelman, the billionaire investor behind the
cosmetics giant Revlon. It was a three-hour intimate affair, The Palm Beach Post reported at the time.
7
Jeffrey Epstein was in attendance along with Jimmy Buffett, Clinton’s college friend Arnold Paul
Prosperi, and Diandra Douglas, who was then married to the actor Michael Douglas. The cost to get in: a
$100,000 donation to the Democratic National Committee. The New York financier would also visit an
aide to Clinton multiple times at the White House, the Daily Beast would later report.
After Clinton left the White House, the ex-president’s relationship with Epstein would grow much,
much closer. For Clinton, Epstein had it all. Money, power, and his own fleet of airplanes. Plus the
helicopter (used to reach his private island) and many, many vehicles. The former president had another
ulterior interest in befriending Epstein, but that wouldn’t become clear to Clinton’s inner circle until later.
So they took their relationship to the next level. They began hanging out together and traveling.
Flight logs indicate that Clinton flew from Miami to Westchester, New York, on February 9, 2002,
with Epstein. The logs further reveal Clinton traveled from New York to London on March 19, 2002. He
returned home March 21, 2002. He also traveled May 22, 2002, from Japan to Hong Kong. On May 23, he
flew to Singapore, leaving May 24 for Bangkok. On July 12, 2002, he and his daughter, Chelsea, attended
the royal wedding of King Mohammed VI with Lalla Salma in Rabat, Morocco. On July 13, 2002, he flew
home to New York, with a brief stop in the Azores.
8
Traveling with Clinton gave Epstein both joy and frustration. In some ways they shared personality
traits. Neither had the capacity to form truly close friendships, according to those who knew them. They
also tended to use other people as a means to an end.
As one New York journalist told the author Carol Felsenthal about Epstein, “He’s truly a brilliant
autodidact, but sort of crippled in a personal sense and who does that remind you of?”
9
The answer to that rhetorical question was obvious—Bill Clinton. The similarities were very real.
Both had an impressive and innate ability to wow their audiences, with little preparation. They were both
also highly motivated by sex.
—
Although the closeness of various politicos and Epstein remains something of a mystery to this day—Bill
Richardson, for instance, is not keen to divulge the details of his Epstein relationship—one thing was
always central in nearly all of Epstein’s relationships: money. Epstein had it; the politicians wanted it.
But what the politicians could offer was legitimacy. Public statements of praise from a well-respected
politician can help private-sector businessmen ingratiate themselves with clients or other well-heeled
moneymen throughout the world.
Which is perhaps why Bill Clinton offered his own public praise for his then friend—after going on a
free trip to Africa in the early 2000s. “Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed
philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first-century
science. I especially appreciated his insights and generosity during the recent trip to Africa to work on
democratization, empowering the poor, citizen service, and combating HIV/AIDS,” Clinton would tell
New York magazine.
10
But the secret was, Epstein did not actually like Clinton. Nor did Clinton like Epstein. There were
signs of tension from their first trip to Europe in 2002. Epstein’s pilot David Rodgers said the flight crew
had barely checked into the hotel when he “got word from Secret Service that President Clinton wanted to
leave that night.”
“When we went there we thought we were going to be there for likely probably at least a couple of
nights. But it didn’t turn out—we didn’t even spend one night there,” Rodgers said in a videotaped
deposition.
It’s unclear why Clinton felt such an urgency to leave London. Epstein continued to take the former
president on other overseas plane trips, but Clinton’s personality soon started to grate on him.
Upon returning from the trip to Africa, Epstein further confided in one good friend, “Boy, that was a
mistake.”
“Why?” asked the friend.
“I don’t like the guy,” Epstein told him at the time.
Epstein claimed he did not like Clinton because he did not think he was a good person, the friend
recounted. “He just didn’t respect him; he was all over how horrible of a person he was,” the friend
recalled in an interview.
But in truth the verdict might have been more mixed. “If you were a boxer at the downtown gymnasium
at 14th Street and Mike Tyson walked in, your face would have the same look as these foreign leaders had
when Clinton entered the room. He is the world’s greatest politician,” he reportedly told another friend.
11
Despite Epstein’s apparent mixed views of Clinton, the relationship continued after the Africa
sojourn. Epstein seemed to have the president’s ear whenever he wanted it, according to confidants.
Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard professor and criminal defense attorney, vividly remembers a summer
dinner at Caroline Kennedy’s Martha’s Vineyard home in the late 1990s with Bill and Hillary Clinton.
“Before dinner we were standing around having cocktails. A Secret Service agent came over to
President Clinton and gave him the phone and said someone wants to talk to you,” Dershowitz recalled in
an interview.
“Clinton went off for five, maybe ten minutes, had a conversation. Then he came back and said,
‘Alan, somebody wants to talk to you.’ He gave me his phone, and it was Jeffrey Epstein. I said, ‘What
are you doing on the phone?’ He said ‘Oh, I’m talking to Bill.’ That was it. Of course, there’s no question
he had a friendship with Bill Clinton,” said Dershowitz.
The Africa trip would also prove to be a fatal mistake for Epstein. The public praise would, in the
long run, be to his detriment. The question is, what reason did he have for keeping Clinton around in the
meanwhile? And what was Clinton getting out of Epstein?
—
Clinton was allegedly carrying on an affair with at least one woman in Epstein’s orbit, but she was well
over the age of consent.
Ghislaine Maxwell, a constant presence at the ex-president’s side during these trips, was the primary
reason Clinton let Epstein ferry him around the world.
“Bill and Ghislaine were getting it on,” a source who witnessed the relationship said in an
interview. “That’s why he was around Epstein—to be with her.”
The source explained that reporters have been missing the point about the Clinton-Epstein relationship
by focusing on Epstein’s sex crimes. “Clinton’s stupid but not an idiot,” the source says, dismissing the
idea that the ex-president was sexually involved with children.
Clinton’s primary interest in Epstein was the woman he once dated and who allegedly helped procure
her ex-boyfriend’s future victims.
“You couldn’t hang out with her without being with him,” the source said of the Epstein-Clinton
relationship.
“Clinton just used him like everything else,” the source explains. In this case, Epstein was being used
as an alibi while he hooked up with Maxwell.
The relationship between Clinton and Maxwell was not confined to these overseas junkets. It
continued in New York City, where Clinton on multiple occasions visited Maxwell’s own private
townhome at 116 East Sixty-fifth Street, an $11 million pad that runs a touch below seven thousand square
feet, much more modest than Epstein’s palatial townhome a few blocks north. (Maxwell purchased it in
2000 for a mere $4.95 million.)
The coziness between the former president and the charming British socialite drew notice in New
York social circles. Clinton and Maxwell were spotted dining together at the Madison Avenue Italian
mainstay Nello, according to a 2002 New York magazine article, which described Maxwell as a “maneater” in the same paragraph. When Clinton went stag to a New York education charity gala in late 2001
—Hillary declined to attend—Maxwell was reportedly at his side.
The relationship also carried over to the Clinton Global Initiative and Clinton Foundation. Maxwell
became somewhat of a fixture at these events. It was there where she was even served court papers about
her participation in Epstein’s abuse.
On July 31, 2010 Maxwell was among the few guests to attend Chelsea Clinton’s wedding at the
former Astor estate in Rhinebeck, New York. This auspicious event followed an embarrassing incident
for Maxwell.
“Only a few months earlier, while attending the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City, at the end
of an Indian summer, in September 2009, a process server walked through the packed lobby of the
Sheraton Hotel on Eighth Avenue . . . and served Ghislaine Maxwell papers for a deposition,” the
journalist Conchita Sarnoff recalls.
“Maxwell . . . was huddled in a small group talking to other guests” as the server approached her. He
“called out her name and . . . with so many people surrounding her, Maxwell was unsuspecting. She
confirmed her identity and he served her notice. The deposition was in relation to Epstein’s sexual abuse
case. The server left at once,” Sarnoff writes in her book, TrafficKing.
12
“Ironically, photographs of Maxwell taken by a private investigator who accompanied the process
server showed Maxwell receiving notice while standing beneath a human trafficking banner. Human
trafficking was the Conference’s theme at the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative,” she writes.
“Maxwell never appeared at the deposition claiming, the day prior to her testimony she had to
immediately return to England to care for her dying mother. At the time of that trip, . . . the elder Mrs.
Maxwell was not gravely ill. Not long after the deposition was scheduled, Maxwell was spotted again in
New York. As a British subject there was nothing the attorneys could do to force her to take the
deposition.”
Clinton, though he has a long history of being accused of sexual misconduct, has never been accused of
engaging with an underage female with Epstein. Despite rampant speculation, in fact Clinton’s appetite
was being fed by someone else entirely.
“I have seen reports saying or implying that I had sex with former president Bill Clinton on Little Saint
James Island,” Giuffre has said in court documents. “Former president Bill Clinton was present on the
island at a time when I was also present on the island, but I have never had sexual relations with Clinton,
nor have I ever claimed to have such relations. I have never seen him have sexual relations with anyone.”
This apparently wasn’t for lack of trying by Epstein. After returning from his trip to Asia with Bill
Clinton, Epstein boasted that he had tried to rope Clinton into a hotel room orgy with him, a bevy of young
women, and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones.
“He said that he flew with Clinton,” said Dershowitz in an interview. “When they landed in Asia . . .
Mick Jagger had a party in his room with lots of young women and lots of sex, like an orgy.
“Epstein was there, and Clinton walked in and saw what was going on, immediately said, ‘No, no, no,
this is not my thing,’ and walked out. Epstein told me that story,” said Dershowitz. “Obviously, there were
lots of people there, and whatever Clinton did, he didn’t do it in public.”
But involvement with Maxwell herself raises serious questions. After all, Maxwell isn’t just a former
lover of Epstein’s. She is an alleged co-conspirator in Epstein’s sex crimes.
During the same time period when she was close with Clinton, Maxwell was allegedly recruiting
underage women to engage in paid sex acts with Epstein, according to court testimony from multiple
alleged victims.
“Maxwell was heavily involved in the illegal sex,” Giuffre has also said in court documents. “I
understood her to be a very powerful person. She used Epstein’s money and he used her name and
connections to gain power and prestige.”
Additionally, Giuffre has said in legal documents, “One way to describe Maxwell’s role was as the
‘madame.’ She assumed a position of trust for all the girls, including me. She got me to trust her and
Epstein. It turned out that Maxwell was all about sex all the time. She had sex with underaged girls
virtually every day when I was around her, and she was very forceful.”
Giuffre has detailed their sexual interactions at the Palm Beach mansion, the Virgin Islands residence,
the New Mexico ranch, the New York townhome, France, and “many other locations.” The victim has
said, “I also observed Maxwell have sex with dozens of underage girls.”
Johanna Sjoberg, a woman who says Maxwell recruited her when she was a student at Palm Beach
Atlantic University, claimed the British media heiress punished her for failing to make Epstein reach
orgasm during one session.
“Ghislaine called me after I had left and said, I have the camera I bought for you, but you cannot
receive it yet because you came here and didn’t finish your job and I had to finish it for you,” said
Sjoberg. “She was implying that I did not get Jeffrey off, and so she had to do it.”
13
In one of the most disturbing accounts, Maxwell allegedly confiscated the passport and cell phone of a
fifteen-year-old Swedish girl who was pressured to have sex with Maxwell on Epstein’s private island,
according to court testimony from a former house manager for Epstein’s friends Eva and Glenn Dubin.
Rinaldo Rizzo, the former house manager for Epstein’s friends Eva and Glenn Dubin, has said he saw
indications that something was off when he visited Epstein’s house for a pool party.
“As I’m walking to the bathroom, what caught my eye, and I had to take a double look, there were
pictures of naked women, half-dressed girls,” said Rizzo in a deposition. “I leaned over and started
looking at these pictures for a brief minute, and it was just so coincidental that as I did that, Ms. Maxwell
enters, and she immediately says to me that Jeffrey would like for me to rejoin the party immediately.”
—
Alfredo Rodriguez, a former butler for Epstein, also said Maxwell kept nude photographs of young girls
on her computer that appeared to be surreptitiously taken.
“I don’t think they knew they were being photographed,” said Rodriguez in a court deposition.
But never mind the accusations. They did not appear to bother the Clintons. In fact, even after the court
documents detailing the worst of her alleged crimes, the former first family was still keen to have
Maxwell hang around.
She vacationed with Chelsea Clinton. And she was at Chelsea’s wedding to the son of the ex-congressman Edward Mezvinsky and ex-congresswoman Marjorie Margolies, Marc Mezvinsky.
A source with knowledge of the situation says that Chelsea Clinton’s connection continually brought
Maxwell closer to the former first family.
“Chelsea vacationed with her and kept her around the foundation,” the source said in an interview.
“She went to her wedding!”
Other reporters have touched on the same detail. “Ghislaine was the contact between Epstein and
Clinton,” Politico quoted a source as saying. “She ended up being close to the family because she and
Chelsea ended up becoming close.”
Chelsea Clinton’s chief of staff, Bari Lurie, has denied the coziness of the relationship. “It wasn’t until
2015 that Chelsea and (her husband) Marc became aware of the horrific allegations against Ghislaine
Maxwell and hope that all the victims find justice,” Lurie said to Politico in a statement. “Chelsea and
Marc were friendly with her because of her relationship with a dear friend of theirs. When that
relationship ended, Chelsea and Marc’s friendship with her ended as well.”
14
All this despite the volumes of legal documents filed against Epstein and his alleged madam,
Maxwell.
And her parents have also denied having knowledge of Epstein’s alleged sex crimes, beyond what’s
been published in news reports.
“President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida
some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York,” his spokesman Angel
Ureña said in a statement shortly after Epstein’s 2019 arrest.
“In 2002 and 2003, President Clinton took a total of four trips on Jeffrey Epstein’s airplane: one to
Europe, one to Asia, and two to Africa, which included stops in connection with the work of the Clinton
Foundation. Staff, supporters of the Foundation, and his Secret Service detail traveled on every leg of
every trip. He had one meeting with Epstein in his Harlem office in 2002, and around the same time made
one brief visit to Epstein’s New York apartment with a staff member and his security detail. He’s not
spoken to Epstein in well over a decade, and has never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein’s ranch in
New Mexico, or his residence in Florida.”
15
The last known flight Clinton took aboard Epstein’s jet was November 4, 2003, flying from Brussels
to Oslo, for an HIV/AIDS project, and then flying to Hong Kong, Siberia, and Beijing.
—
After Epstein pleaded guilty to sex crimes in 2008, Maxwell had to strike out on her own. Much like
Clinton, who had left the White House under a dark cloud, she had to hatch a plan to be welcomed back to
polite society. And she did it with the assistance of none other than the Clintons.
Maxwell did what conscientious liberals do and in 2012 built a charitable organization around a dogooder pet cause. She created the TerraMar Project, a nonprofit focusing on conserving the world’s
oceans. She credited her interest in the project with once finding a plastic hanger on the ocean floor, but
her love of yachting might have been just as important.
For Maxwell, big boats—and access to them—were a status symbol she appeared to relish. She
would reportedly brag about Jeffrey Epstein’s client Les Wexner’s yacht as though it were her own.
“Ghislaine would always call me and say, ‘I’m coming down to use the boat with some friends.’ I
would always tell her, ‘I have to call the owner. I can’t just let you on the boat.’ And she would never
show up,” the former captain of Wexner’s yacht, Craig Tafoya, told The New York Times. “She did that
half a dozen times. And in talking to a guy who worked for [the yacht’s designer], he said, ‘She does that
all the time. She does it when she’s in front of all her girlfriends and wants to brag that she can go use
someone’s yacht.’”
16
Whatever had prompted her to start it, the TerraMar Project gave Maxwell an avenue to re-ingratiate
herself into polite society. She began giving interviews, making public speeches, and of course making
pitches at charitable gatherings, like the Clinton Global Initiative.
At a 2013 Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York City, the TerraMar Project was able to
secure commitments from participants to help “mobilize the international community and the public at
large on the importance of the Oceans and the Seas.”
17 Of course, four years earlier Maxwell had been
subpoenaed for alleged participation in Epstein’s sex crimes at that very same conference.
But reports indicate that Epstein was the original funder of the Clinton Global Initiative. Though the
Clintons have not confirmed this, it’s been written that Epstein gave Bill Clinton’s pet project $4 million
to get off the ground.
Tax records reveal little about TerraMar activities, though they do show that Maxwell wasn’t able
to raise enough funds to run the nonprofit without incurring debt.
—
Ironically, in some ways it took Hillary Clinton losing the 2016 presidential election for Epstein to finally
be brought to justice.
In the years after Donald Trump won his presidential election in 2016, media exposés would
chronicle vivid stories of rampant sexual abuse across America. Hollywood celebrities, business
executives, and politicians would be embarrassed and brought down.
18
It was called the #MeToo
movement, and it exposed men who used status and power to dominate, and violate, women.
The media wrote about a reckoning in American culture. The idea being that the behavior of old
would no longer be tolerated. That imbalance of power, male dominance, and sexual assault were out.
Respect for the victims and the right for their stories to be heard and believed were in.
There were some clear outliers. Bill Clinton, who himself had been accused of sexual assault in the
past, did not see his behavior reexamined amid our new enlightenment. The current president, Donald
Trump, also had many of his own accusations; though Democrats tended to hold these charges against him,
Republicans by and large gave him a pass.
Epstein had ties to both. For Clinton, the two had struck up a friendship going back as far as the early
1990s, meeting at the White House on at least several occasions. That was only the beginning. As an ex-president, the friendship flourished, with Clinton joining Epstein on his private jet, sickeningly dubbed the
Lolita Express, after Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita about a middle-aged man’s obsession and love of
a twelve-year-old girl, for round-the-world jaunts.
Trump, well before he ran for president as a Republican, attended events with Epstein in Palm Beach
and Manhattan, where both had homes. Then a real estate mogul who had flirted with presidential politics
with a half-assed third-party run in 1999, he appeared well aware of his acquaintance’s criminal
proclivities. Trump would later claim to have banned his associate from Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach
resort,
19
for making unwelcome sexual advances, though The New York Times would report that the fallout
was instead over business disagreements.
20
In fact, a clear line can be drawn from the 2016 election of Trump and the #MeToo movement, when
the accusations levied against the president caused some in the media and the Democratic Party to
reexamine their own relationship with sexual predators. And of course there’s a clear connection between
the #MeToo movement and the reexamination of Jeffrey Epstein.
The supposed financier had run afoul of the law before. In 2008, Epstein had pleaded guilty to
procuring an underage girl for prostitution. His admission gave him tremendous leniency in sentencing,
allowing him to work out a special thirteen-month custody arrangement that permitted him to leave state
lockup daily to go to work.
The prosecutor who granted such a sweet deal was none other than Alex Acosta, who would be
nominated as secretary of the Department of Labor in February 2017 and confirmed by the full Senate in
April of that year, with a bipartisan 60–38 vote. Acosta had reportedly claimed to the Trump
administration when he was interviewing to be secretary of labor that he couldn’t bring down the hammer
on Epstein because he was an asset to the intelligence community. “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to
intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” Acosta revealed to the White House.
21
Acosta’s rise to such a high-profile cabinet-level job led at least one paper to look into the leniency of
the original deal with the sexual predator. The explosive and infuriating investigation opened with an
article in the Miami Herald with the damning headline “How a Future Trump Cabinet Member Gave a
Serial Sex Abuser the Deal of a Lifetime.”
22
Acosta, the article alleged, had made the Epstein deal with a lawyer representing the predator, Jay
Lefkowitz, a former George W. Bush administration official then working at the highly regarded Kirkland
& Ellis law firm. The two lawyers met at unconventional locations—more appropriate for friends
catching up than opposing counsels duking it out. The end result was a joke of a sentence, a plea
agreement that wouldn’t disclose the number of accusers. More shocking still was that Epstein’s co-conspirators were granted immunity and the victims were prevented from even learning about the deal, the
Herald reporting alleged.
The series of stories, called “Perversion of Justice,” yanked the spotlight right back onto Epstein and
his wealthy and powerful protectors. The renewed focus and subsequent fallout were nearly immediate.
The lead journalist on the story, Julie K. Brown, had done impressive work tracking down victims and
presented it in a captivating manner.
Public outcry was swift and powerful. At a time when debates over inequality already dominated the
public discourse, here was yet another example that there was one set of rules for the wealthy and
privileged and another set for everyone else. And this time the wealthy villains weren’t just getting away
with hiding their cash or profiting off someone else’s economic misfortune. Jeffrey Epstein was accused
of some of the most disgusting offenses in the criminal code, and plenty of people helped him get away
with it.
This story even managed to transcend the traditional polarized boundaries of American outrage. The
condemnation was bipartisan. Democrats and Republicans were furious. Law enforcement was
reengaged, and finally the jig was up.
Epstein was arrested again on July 6, 2019, as he stepped off his private jet in Teterboro Airport in
New Jersey. The charges were (again) horrific—sex trafficking of minors a decade and a half earlier.
Prosecutors said the evidence was solid. They had also recovered what amounted to child pornography,
nude snaps of his victims. Stories swirled, with public reports suggesting that the alleged human
trafficking ring was huge, international, and beyond the scope of what anyone had ever imagined.
More destructive to Americans’ trust in public institutions was all Epstein’s high-profile friends. If
Trump had publicly acknowledged awareness of Epstein’s proclivity for having sex with girls “on the
younger side”—that is, underage—didn’t that mean that his other elite pals had to know what was going
on?
It was not just Epstein who would feel the heat. A week after the arrest, on July 12, Acosta would
resign amid outrage over his decade-old plea deal. “The work release was complete BS,” Acosta
admitted in a press conference, a failed attempt to alleviate the mounting political pressure, two days
before his resignation.
23
“We believe we proceeded appropriately,” he added. “We did what we did because we wanted to see
Epstein go to jail.”
—
After Epstein’s death, Ghislaine Maxwell practically disappeared. In the weeks following his death, there
was a mad dash to find her. No one did.
That is until she showed up in the New York Post in a seemingly staged photograph at an In-N-Out fast food restaurant in Los Angeles.
24 The paper claimed, “Maxwell, 57, the alleged madam to the
multimillionaire pedophile, was scarfing down a burger, fries and shake al fresco at an In-N-Out Burger
on Monday while reading ‘The Book of Honor: The Secret Lives and Deaths of CIA Operatives,’ a
nonfiction best-seller by journalist Ted Gup.”
The book—and makeup-free photo of the usually glamorous Maxwell in a bluish-gray lightweight
hoodie—would be a bit too pat. But regardless, that would be, as of this writing, the last time she was
seen in public. Her name would be mentioned. She would, in the absence of Epstein, face civil legal
actions, including a defamation lawsuit filed by Giuffre.
“Well, I guess this is the last time I’ll be eating here!” she told a fellow diner. There were rumors she
was hiding out with a boyfriend in New England or that she was sailing the high seas. But wherever she
was, she couldn’t be found.
Privately, she seemed somewhat relieved that Epstein was gone, her friend Laura Goldman told us.
“You know, it may be for the best,” she said, according to Goldman’s account of a phone call they had
shortly after Epstein died.
On March 18, 2020, Ghislaine sued Epstein’s estate for legal and private security fees. In the lawsuit,
filed in the U.S. Virgin Islands, she said Epstein had promised in 2004 that he would always support her
financially. Meanwhile, many speculated that her old flame Bill Clinton was involved in Epstein’s death,
perhaps because the Clintons feared he would reveal their secrets.
Even President Donald Trump helped fan the flames. Hours after news broke, a Twitter user under the
handle @w_terrence tweeted a message:
25
Died of SUICIDE on 24/7 SUICIDE WATCH ? Yeah right! How does that happen
#JefferyEpstein had information on Bill Clinton & now he’s dead
I see #TrumpBodyCount trending but we know who did this!
RT if you’re not Surprised
#EpsteinSuicide #ClintonBodyCount #ClintonCrimeFamily
The message, accompanied by a short video expounding on the theory, was retweeted by the president
of the United States. Immediately the press pounced, complaining once again that Trump was quick to
spread unverified, conspiratorial messages.
But Trump, as per usual, refused to cave. “The retweet—which is what it was, just a retweet—was
from somebody that’s a very respected conservative pundit, so I think that was fine,” Trump said days
later. He did, however, claim to have “no idea” if in fact the Clintons were involved.
“I know he was on his plane 27 times, and he said he was on the plane four times,” Trump told the
press of Clinton and Epstein. “But when they checked the plane logs, Bill Clinton—who was a very good
friend of Epstein—he was on the plane about 27 or 28 times. So why did he say four times?”
The comment was a reference to Clinton’s apparently downplaying his association with Epstein.
Trump, whose own relationship with Epstein reportedly deteriorated after the fellow Palm Beach
resident made a pass at a young girl at his Mar-a-Lago club, further poured gas on the conspiracy.
“The question you have to ask is, did Bill Clinton go to the island? Because Epstein had an island.
That was not a good place, as I understand it, and I was never there,” Trump told the press. “So you have
to ask, did Bill Clinton go to the island? That’s the question. If you find that out, you’re going to know a
lot.”
26
Clinton’s own spokesman Angel Ureña responded to Trump’s tweet by calling for his removal.
“Ridiculous, and of course not true—and Donald Trump knows it. Has he triggered the 25th Amendment
yet?” he said on Twitter expressing outrage.
27
Ureña had previously told the press, “President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes
Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently
charged in New York.”
28
13
Epstein’s Secret
The Wexner Connection
During the interview Epstein told her to undress and actually assisted her to do so while saying, “Let me manhandle you for a
second.”
SANTA MONICA
POLICE DEPARTMENT
Undoubtedly, many in powerful positions are happy that their sexual peccadilloes are not being talked
about in a court of law, splashed across tabloids, mocked incessantly on social media. Those would
have been some of the consequences if Jeffrey Epstein had decided to seek retribution after his
second arrest. But there’s another glaring mystery that has perplexed those observing the case: Where
exactly did Epstein’s money come from?
There has always been wild speculation about the sources of Epstein’s income. Did he blackmail the
rich and famous, forcing countless exchanges of millions of dollars so that he would not release sex tapes
of them getting it on with his harem of young girls? Did he simply charge a fee, so to speak, to traffic
children for sexual abuse, racking up large sums of money from high-dollar clients around the world? Did
he launder money for some of the world’s most hardened criminals and accumulate so much in
commissions and fees that he too became über-wealthy?
Or was his own purported business as a money manager to billionaires successful enough that
eventually he was able to join their ranks?
All of these are possibilities, of course. Or in the end it was some combination of all these schemes—
plus more—that helped account for Epstein’s wealth.
Here’s what we do know for sure: Epstein was said to be worth more than $500 million at the time of
his death, yet despite all the press reports, despite all the scrutiny, only one single major client of Jeffrey
Epstein has ever been confirmed. His name is Leslie Wexner, the multi-billionaire founder of the clothing
giant L Brands, owner of the clothier the Limited and the lingerie giant Victoria’s Secret, and one of
Epstein’s first big clients.
“He told me he had five clients, each worth over a billion dollars, and that he didn’t take clients worth
less than a billion dollars,” said Dershowitz. “That he was very good at understanding the tax
ramifications and that he would never handle my money or money for people like me because we were
not rich enough.”
The amount of money that is known that Epstein got from Wexner is alone enough to account for his
$500 million final net worth upon his death. At least in theory.
But to call Epstein solely a money manager is a mistake. “This idea that, that somehow there are
clients out there that he did things for—you know, financial advisory services—that’s just a fiction; that’s
just a cover story. In my view, he provided services, but they had nothing to do with financial services.
He wasn’t qualified to provide financial services,” said one plugged-in former Wall Streeter in an
interview.
Laura Goldman, Maxwell’s friend, said she occasionally tried to talk to Epstein about investments
when they saw each other at parties in the 1990s but found him to be cagey about his work.
“He was rumored to be an excellent manager,” she said. “When you asked him questions, he didn’t
really want to discuss it. I would always get the feeling, why doesn’t this person want to discuss this? My
feeling, it was kind of odd.”
Some, however, appreciated the financial advice he would sometimes pass down. “You know, he was
a good guy, he did a hundred things for me,” a friend of his said in an interview. “He called me in the
office in 2008 to say sell all your stock now. No one made him do that. And how he knew that the market
was going to crash, I couldn’t tell you. But he sure as hell knew.”
And yet Goldman, a former stockbroker, said she has never met anyone who traded with Epstein.
“I went to Wharton in the go-go years, when Wall Street was where everything came from, and
everybody I went to school with, not one person knew anybody who traded with Epstein,” she said. “How
could that be?”
Goldman suspects that Epstein was not doing much investing, but was actually parking money in
various places to mitigate Wexner’s losses and liabilities.
“I don’t think on any level he was a brilliant investor,” she said.
But Epstein did have one remarkable ability that helped him sink his hooks firmly into Wexner’s life,
according to Epstein’s former boss and convicted Ponzi scammer Steven Hoffenberg.
“He could really interpret weaknesses,” said Hoffenberg. “He was the best seducer of people, the
biggest manipulator I ever saw.”
—
The relationship between Epstein and Wexner might have been the most important to Epstein’s life. It is
likely responsible for his biggest financial windfall ever, paving the way for him to own some of the most
luxurious properties in the world, as well as his own airplane.
It is easy to imagine that Epstein would have been wealthy and successful without ever meeting
Wexner, given his quick ascension from college dropout to Bear Stearns partner in 1980. But it is unlikely
that he himself would ever have joined the ranks of the über-rich without Wexner’s assistance.
“I first met Mr. Epstein in the mid-1980s, through friends who vouched for and recommended him as a
knowledgeable financial professional,” Wexner stated in 2019, trying to deflect criticism of his relations
with Epstein by claiming unnamed others made the connection.
1
“Mr. Epstein represented that he had various well-known and respected individuals both as his
financial clients and in his inner circle. Based on positive reports from several friends, and on my initial
dealings with him, I believed I could trust him,” he added.
Around the time they met, Wexner had several concerns that weighed heavily on him. He had lost a
substantial portion of his net worth in the 1987 stock market crash and needed help with his investments.
He was also building his own town outside Columbus, an ambitious project that let him fulfill his lifelong
dream of being an architect but that was being hindered by numerous political and bureaucratic obstacles.
Maybe most important, he was dating a woman—or, rather, letting her escort him when he had to
attend public events—who was crazy about him and wanted to get married. The woman, who was from a
tiny town in central Ohio, had converted to Judaism and changed her last name to “Cohen” in an effort to
appease Wexner’s domineering mother. But Wexner was desperate to end the relationship with Ms.
Cohen. The fashion mogul had fallen in love with someone else.
Wexner’s love interest was a young lawyer named Abigail Koppel, a beautiful Georgia belle who was
twenty-five years his junior. One friend of Wexner’s described her as the “perfect wife” for him. After
decades of loneliness, Wexner had finally met his match in his mid-fifties. But Koppel also came from a
“very traditional, conservative family,” according to the friend. Rumors about Wexner’s sexuality, which
were rampant in Columbus for years, might not sit well.
The billionaire dispatched his new friend Epstein to deliver the breakup news to Ms. Cohen—and,
allegedly, a nondisclosure agreement. Bob Fitrakis, a reporter for the Columbus Free Press, recalled
running into Wexner’s old flame at a party after the breakup.
“She told me a story about how she had an agreement, a nondisclosure clause . . . a seven-figure
check,” said Fitrakis. “Delivered by Epstein with ‘Don’t ever contact Mr. Wexner again.’”
It was unclear what the purpose of the nondisclosure agreement was, but Fitrakis said the ex-girlfriend
claimed at the time that Wexner was bisexual. She was also “very afraid of Jeff Epstein,” according to
Fitrakis.
“People will not say anything negative [about Wexner],” said Dianne Morosky, the wife of Wexner’s
longtime vice-chairman at the Limited, Robert Morosky, in an interview. “They’ll think it. They’ll talk
about it to each other, but they won’t say it publicly. And they’re afraid of him, too, because of his
power.”
Wexner’s problems also seemed to go away after Epstein entered his life and started taking the reins.
His financial portfolio recovered. He ended up marrying Koppel. And he moved his new bride into a
home in the dream town he was finally able to build—New Albany, Ohio, an ode to his wife’s hometown
of Albany, Georgia.
Just a couple years before he reportedly met Epstein, Wexner had added to his portfolio with the
purchase of a small San Francisco lingerie chain, Victoria’s Secret, which he bought for a mere million
dollars when it had only six stores. Over the coming decades he’d grow it into the behemoth it is known
as today—a thousand stores in 2014 and sales of $7.2 billion.
But Wexner did not excel at managing money, nor did he pay much attention to it. When in the 1980s
his company was buying the plus-size brand Lane Bryant, Wexner cared about the idea of the takeover, but
not about the share purchase price.
“He didn’t understand the numbers,” Wexner’s former financial adviser Sandy Lewis told Vanity
Fair.
2 “He’s never understood numbers. This is not his strength. This man is a genius at dressing women.
This is a guy who feels what they feel. That’s his strength. And I figured that out when I first met him and I
don’t know how he got that set up in his brain but in his soul, he has a sense of how people feel when they
wear his clothing. And that’s a gift. That’s just what it is. Some guys write music, this guy knows how to
dress women. He’s very, very talented.”
As talented as he was, he did not seem to be a particularly good judge of character. At age fifty-four,
the cautious Wexner turned over the keys to his multibillion-dollar financial empire to a mystery man from
Coney Island whose short career in finance had included a termination from Bear Stearns for financial
improprieties and a stint at what was then the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history. What nobody in
Columbus could figure out was why.
Lewis had thought he would turn on him. He felt blindsided when the would-be clothing mogul turned
to Epstein, instead of allowing Lewis to manage and invest his finances.
This upset Lewis, who believed Epstein was a “con artist,” he said in his interview with Vanity Fair.
“I can’t imagine, frankly, why a man of his intelligence would simply hand the controls over to another
guy,” Lewis said, attributing it to Wexner’s loneliness.
3 “And this con artist, this fucking idiot, comes into
his life . . . My feeling is that he had been seduced. And I don’t mean seduced in a physical sense, I mean
emotionally seduced out of his loneliness to trust this guy and he figures, he’s so fucking smart he can trust
anybody.”
Perhaps Wexner trusted Epstein with his business because he had helped him with his relationships.
Perhaps it was because of tax strategies or other recommendations. Perhaps it was simply because of
timing. Or perhaps there was another factor altogether.
Around this time another thing happened that rocked Wexner’s financial world. His primary tax
lawyer, Arthur Shapiro, was brutally murdered in Columbus in 1985. The still-unsolved murder had ties
to the mob, Bob Fitrakis of the Columbus Free Press would report. It would rock the small city; Fitrakis
would later discover that police started investigating whether Shapiro’s work as the Limited’s attorney
had led to his murder. According to a 1991 memo from the Columbus Police Department’s Organized
Crime Bureau, Shapiro could have had knowledge of Wexner’s bribing public officials in Ohio. The
findings “lead to a question of ethics and legality of other unknown transactions and associates with
which Wexner may be involved,” said the memo. “Arthur Shapiro could have answered too many of these
sorts of questions, and might have been forced to answer them in his impending Grand Jury hearing.”
According to the memo, Wexner’s company had substantial business dealings with the mob, through its
connection with Walsh Trucking, a New Jersey trucking company affiliated with the Genovese crime
family. The head of Walsh Trucking, Frank Walsh, who was later convicted of racketeering, had even been
using the Limited’s Columbus office as his mailing address, according to the memo. The connection raised
questions in the minds of police when Shapiro, who had insight into Wexner’s finances, was killed by the
mob. But nothing ever came of the memo, and no one was ever charged with the murder, though there was
also a suspect unrelated to Wexner who was later found to have killed another one of his business
associates.
Whatever the reason, Shapiro’s death left a key position in Wexner’s orbit open. He would need
someone to help him with taxes.
Epstein professed expertise in this area. He was of course neither a lawyer nor an accountant. Yet his
ease with numbers and his dazzling mind would be able to tackle complex ideas, especially transnational
tax shelters and tricks.
Steven Hoffenberg, the former chairman of Towers Financial Corporation who himself had his own
complex dealings with Epstein, said in an interview, “Epstein bonded with Wexner over a couple of years
initially.”
In fact, the relations became so close, so quickly that Wexner eventually allowed Epstein to make
every financial decision of his life on his behalf. “Eventually, he took over managing my personal
finances. He was given power of attorney as is common in that context, and he had wide latitude to act on
my behalf with respect to my personal finances while I focused on building my company and undertaking
philanthropic efforts,” Wexner has said.
Epstein was known to have helped Wexner with the building and decoration of his sixty-thousand square-foot villa in New Albany, Ohio.
Wexner had undertaken a somewhat bizarre social experiment—buy up tons of land, just outside
Columbus, turning it essentially into a company town for executives of his L Brands. It was an enormous
undertaking, the purchase, development, and sale of ten thousand acres. The project wasn’t going well.
“Before Epstein came along in 1988, the financial preparations and groundwork for the New Albany
development were a total mess,” Fitrakis told New York magazine.
4 “Epstein cleaned everything up, as
well as serving Wexner in other capacities—such as facilitating visits to Wexner’s home of the crew from
Cats and organizing a Tony Randall song-and-dance show put on in Columbus.”
Epstein in fact at some point purchased his own New Albany home near Wexner’s so that they could
be even closer. It was the second most valuable home in the area. (He purchased it in 1994 and gave it to
Wexner, for free, in 2007.) But he preferred socializing at Wexner’s. Eventually, their social circles began
to merge.
Epstein’s attorney Alan Dershowitz remembers his client inviting him to a dinner at Wexner’s.
“It was just men, which I didn’t like. I remember calling my wife halfway through, telling her this was
boring . . . [Wexner] was married and already had at least one or two kids; they were running around the
house, I remember. But his wife was not at the dinner,” Dershowitz recalled in an interview.
“The only people at the dinner I remember is Shimon Peres, who talked a lot about art because
Wexner has a beautiful art collection including some major Picassos. So Shimon talked a lot about
Picasso. And John Glenn, who was then a United States senator from Ohio, was there. The man who at the
time owned Sotheby’s was there. And Jeffrey was there, and I was there, and Wexner was there,” he said.
“But that was a relatively small dinner party and a very serious intellectual discussion. We talked a lot
about the Middle East as well because of Shimon Peres being there, and I’m very interested in the Middle
East and so is Leslie Wexner. So the two subjects that dominated were the Middle East and art. And then I
flew back with [Epstein] that night on his plane, he dropped me off in Boston. And then the next time I
saw him was at Harvard.”
The Boeing Epstein liked best and possibly used to shuttle Dershowitz to and fro for the party? That,
the pilot David Rodgers has said in court documents, was previously owned by Wexner, or one of his
many companies. But it was Epstein who dubbed it the Lolita Express.
It would be the same plane Epstein used for his trip to Africa with Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, and
Chris Tucker. It was, after all, one of the things Clinton found most attractive about his new friend.
To friends, Epstein would either say he ran money for billionaires or, one recalls, simply say he ran
only Wexner’s money.
A source who would go on to become good friends with Epstein recalls when he first met him asking,
“How do you make money?”
“Well, I’m paid to manage every part of Wexner’s life,” Epstein replied.
“Every part?” the friend asked, fishing for more details.
“Yes,” Epstein confirmed. “If he gets up to go to the bathroom, I’m there to help.”
In an interview, the friend commented, “And so he was Wexner’s boy. And so Wexner is literally who
gave him that house in New York.”
Which is very likely true. Some press reports suggest Wexner was paid $20 million for the New York
mansion, reportedly the largest residence in the city. Real estate records do not reveal a purchase price,
because the property was shielded in a trust, so there’s no public paper trail to confirm any money was
ever paid. The property was officially transferred in December 2011.
“Nobody gives their financial adviser a huge mansion. It’s Seventy-first and Fifth. I’m sorry, that just
doesn’t happen,” a former Wall Street executive said in an interview.
Talking more broadly about the Epstein story, a good friend of Epstein’s added, “Wexner is the
unspoken subplot here.”
—
Epstein was probably never a billionaire. Perhaps never even close. But he was nevertheless extremely
rich.
The best, most accurate accounting of the financier’s finances was what he turned over to the court
upon his second and final arrest, less than a month before he would be dead.
His total assets, according to his filing with the court, were listed at $559,120,954. (Later, there were
reports indicating perhaps his net worth was $100 million greater than the amount disclosed in federal
court.)
The breakdown is as follows:
Cash: $56,547,773
Fixed income: $14,304,679
Equities: $112,679,138
Hedge funds and private equity: $194,986,301
Properties: $180,603,063
9 East Seventy-first Street, Manhattan, New York, estimated to be worth: $55,931,000
49 Zorro Ranch Road, Stanley, New Mexico, estimated to be worth: $17,246,208
358 El Brillo Way, Palm Beach, Florida, estimated to be worth: $12,380,209
22 Avenue Foch, Paris, France, estimated to be worth: $8,672,823
Great St. James Island, Virgin Islands, estimated to be worth: $22,498,600
Little St. James Island, Virgin Islands, estimated to be worth: $63,874,223
The assets are consistent with the amount of money some believe Epstein made from Wexner directly.
The New York Times has reported that Epstein received assets worth $100 million previously owned by
Wexner or his companies: the New York mansion, the New Albany mansion (which was later sold), and
the Boeing airplane. That sum does not include payments received by Epstein.
“I’ve had people say it was a billion dollars, which I discount, or $200 million. I’m thinking more in
the $400 or $500 million range,” the Columbus-based journalist Bob Fitrakis said in an interview. “And
the question is, there’s always a question is, how much did Les know he was taking? He had absolute
durable power of attorney to get rid of his properties, his assets, move stuff everywhere.”
There’s also the fact that Wexner has accused Epstein of stealing more than $46 million. The details
are hazy. Wexner is an extremely private guy and has taken most opportunities to keep his head down and
to not comment on his relationship with Epstein. The eighty-two-year-old these days prefers
reclusiveness. He’s now married, with four kids.
Yet after Epstein was arrested for the second time, in 2019, but days before his death, Wexner
addressed shareholders of his L Brands holding company about his controversial relationship with his ex-consigliere.
“We discovered that he had misappropriated vast sums of money from me and my family,” Wexner
stated in an August 2019 letter.
5 “This was, frankly, a tremendous shock, even though it clearly pales in
comparison to the unthinkable allegations against him now.”
The amount of money, financial press reporters would soon say, was in excess of $46 million.
Wexner indicated he was able to get some of the money returned.
But $46 million alone, depending on when it was taken and how it was spent, could account for all of
Epstein’s assets at the end of his life.
That is, if Epstein had simply invested that sum in an S&P index fund that returned over that period on
average roughly 10 percent, compound interest alone, with no further investments, he would have netted
more than $800 million. Plus, the properties have appreciated in value quite a bit since Epstein acquired
them, and some were allegedly not acquired with money.
Of course a full financial forensic account of Epstein’s finances has never been publicly released.
(There’s no indication one has ever been performed, nor is there any sign that Epstein’s remaining trust
has ever authorized such an expedition either.)
—
Wexner’s money was not the only benefit afforded to Epstein. The financier also took advantage of his
client and friend’s connections to the modeling industry.
In May 1997, Epstein was in California and met the model Alicia Arden, whom he invited back to his
hotel room. She was, Epstein told her at the time, being asked to try out for a spot in the prestigious
catalog the company produced.
“She met the suspect, Jeffrey Epstein, at Shutters Hotel for a modeling interview,” a police officer
would write in a May 20, 1997, Santa Monica Police Department report.
6
“During the interview Epstein told her to undress and actually assisted her to do so while saying, ‘Let
me manhandle you for a second,’” the police report added, going on to allege assault.
“Epstein groped her buttocks against her will while acting as though as he was evaluating her body . . . At one point Epstein asked her to undress a second time [and he] actually assisted her by pulling her
blouse up and pulling her skirt up and groping her buttocks.”
The reason she was there in the first place, despite being hesitant to be so, was the power of the
Victoria’s Secret catalog. Being featured in the glossy could make a career.
Nevertheless, the accusation, which was first reported by The New York Times in 2019, never led to
further punishment.
After this alleged assault, Wexner did nothing to distance his consigliere from his personal life or his
company.
“Why would someone that powerful and successful befriend someone like Jeffrey Epstein?” Arden
told the Times, speaking of Wexner.
7 “I don’t get it.”
It was one of the first warning signs about Epstein that would go unprosecuted by law enforcement.
His friends also did not heed the warnings.
An L Brands spokeswoman told the Times, “While Mr. Epstein served as Mr. Wexner’s personal
money manager for a period that ended nearly 12 years ago, we do not believe he was ever employed by
nor served as an authorized representative of the company.”
The first recorded warning of Epstein’s predatory ways received by law enforcement officials would
also go unpunished. And it would also, at least tangentially, involve Wexner.
That summer Maria Farmer, Epstein’s first known victim, was brought to Ohio to visit Wexner. She
was familiar with Wexner before the visit. “Epstein told me what their relationship was. He said Wexner
would do anything for him. He bragged about it,” she told CBS.
She even says that he referred to Wexner as “The Wizard of Oz” because “he was the one behind the
curtain that had all the power.”
At the Wexner house, Farmer alleges that Epstein and Maxwell “asked me to come into a bedroom
with them and then proceeded to sexually assault me against my will. I fled from the room and called the
sheriff’s office but did not get any response. The Wexner's security staff refused to let me leave the
property. I pleaded with them and my father drove up from Kentucky to Ohio to help me. I was held
against my will for approximately 12 hours until I was ultimately allowed to leave with my father.”
The Wexner's have denied Farmer’s claims, telling CBS they “never met her, never spoke with her.”
8
Farmer reported her alleged assault to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which she says did not
pursue an investigation, despite the evidence of her witness testimony.
—
The connection between Epstein and Wexner went deep. When Wexner was building his 316-foot yacht,
Limitless, Epstein was involved in the minutiae. “He didn’t take B.S. from anybody,” the ship’s ex-captain told The New York Times about Epstein.
9
(Epstein, however, did not like boating; he’d “look at a
glass of water and get seasick,” the ex-captain said.)
More curiously, the two were connected through a series of obscure business ventures and charitable
foundations. The complex web will never be unraveled without the help of Epstein, who of course is
dead, and Wexner, who remains hidden. But serious accusations of financial shenanigans have been
levied, with strong evidence suggesting that the money, for the most part, was not going to charity but
straight into Epstein’s pocket.
That is, it’s likely the charitable trusts have been avenues for Epstein to pay himself off with Wexner’s
money. Bloomberg’s Joe Nocera discovered how this scheme might have worked.
10
“In a 13D filed in late March 2002, Epstein is listed as trustee or co-trustee for the Wexner Children’s
Trust II, which held 1.3 percent of L Brands stock, as well as something called Health and Science
Interests II, which held 3 percent of the shares. (Wexner himself held 15 percent of the stock.) The
document shows that on March 26, Wexner moved 15 million shares, worth over $250 million, from the
Wexner Children’s Trust, which he solely controlled, to the Health and Science Interests II, where he was
a co-trustee with Epstein. The next day, Health and Science Interests II sold 49,800 shares at $17.50 a
share,” Nocera reported.
“It is possible that the sale was simply a diversification move—though . . . Epstein had never
registered with the SEC as an investment professional. It seems more likely that it was a way to put
money in Epstein’s pocket. There are a half-dozen 13Ds that show a similar pattern: Wexner transfers L
Brands stock from trust he solely controls to one where Epstein is a trustee. Within days, the Epstein managed trust sold the stock.”
Reporters for ABC News would go further in tracking the money ties between Wexner and Epstein.
“Records show that between 1991 and 2006, Epstein oversaw the sale, mostly through the New York
Stock Exchange, of more than $1.3 billion of company stock held by these trusts, representing a vast pool
of cash largely controlled by Epstein,” ABC would report in January 2020.
11
“Much of the money was certainly used for charitable purposes, but . . . a potential pattern appears to
emerge, one in which Epstein liquidates large amount of stock on behalf of these trusts and then, shortly
after, makes large purchases for himself, including homes, planes, even a private island,” the report
stated.
Again, this financial forensic accounting is nearly impossible without a clear view into Epstein’s and
even Wexner’s accounts. But the financial relationship is extensive—and all one-sided.
—
Being locked up is usually not considered good for business. Especially if you’re supposedly running a
client-facing money management firm.
Wexner publicly began separating himself from Epstein. “As the allegations against Mr. Epstein in
Florida were emerging, he vehemently denied them. But by early fall 2007, it was agreed that he should
step back from the management of our personal finances,” Wexner wrote in a letter to his family
foundation in 2019.
But Epstein was telling a different story to friends, claiming that his first guilty plea in 2008 was of no
major concern, according to a friend who discussed the matter with him.
A good friend was worried about Epstein’s income stream from Wexner after the arrest, he revealed in
an interview. So he picked up the phone and called him, “How are you going to make a living?”
“Oh, come on, you believed that crap?” the friend recalls Epstein saying on the phone.
The friend adds, “So, Wexner always continued to give to him.”
—
So what connected them? What was the subplot? Some think it was blackmail. It had been rumored for
years that Wexner was gay. In 1985, New York magazine published a piece titled “The Bachelor
Billionaire: On Pins and Needles with Leslie Wexner.”
12
With a wink and a nod, the magazine labeled the forty-seven-year-old a “confirmed bachelor.”
“He doesn’t seem to want a child, and, despite what he says about the perfect woman . . . he seems to
be waiting to achieve some mystical harmony and balance in himself first,” the author would write.
The magazine would go on to quote Wexner as saying, “A lot of people think because I am not married
I am asexual or homosexual, but I enjoy a relationship with a woman.”
The article’s implication was clear—that the fashionista with an expertise in women’s lingerie may
not have the hands-on experience someone in his position in the 1980s might have been expected to have.
That is, that he may be unfamiliar with the sexual needs of women.
“We all suspected/knew that Les Wexner was gay,” says a former Wall Street source whose firm
worked with Wexner’s. “I’ve heard that he and Epstein had an affair,” the source added. “This is all about
keeping that quiet.”
Some might laugh at the idea of Epstein’s having an affair with Wexner, but these are not the only
allegations that he was interested in men—or perhaps boys.
His former friend and colleague Steven Hoffenberg said that Epstein was in fact gay. “He lived in the
Solow building on Second Avenue,” Hoffenberg explained. He then claimed he never set foot in Epstein’s
Manhattan apartment because “I didn’t want to be in that box. I’m straight. Epstein was not.”
Hoffenberg declined to provide further details except to say, “I spent years with him and his
activities.”
Lynn Forester de Rothschild, the socialite who introduced Epstein to her many friends, including
President Bill Clinton, once remarked to a mutual acquaintance that she believed Epstein was gay because
he never made a move on her.
Another acquaintance of his remarked, “We always thought he was gay . . . I thought he was
obnoxious, and I thought he hated women. He never seemed affectionate to the women.”
Others sources were a bit more circumspect. “I think he was ashamed of being gay, and he was
supermacho as the result of it and would have sex with women, would brag about his women,” one
associate of Epstein’s confided. “My own theory was that because he was embarrassed and ashamed and
he didn’t want anybody to know that he liked boys, but that’s speculation.”
If Wexner was gay, he could not allow the public to know. “It wouldn’t do for a CEO of a big company
like the Limited to be gay,” the source added. “It was a time when you couldn’t do that.”
Which best explains the financial concessions that Wexner for years made to Epstein. It was never a
fiduciary-client relationship. It was one made up of blackmail and extortion.
And it didn’t stop there. It went way beyond just Wexner, especially as Epstein’s cachet in America
began to wane after he was locked up late in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
“He was blackmailing, you know, shahs and sultans and everything from the Mideast. I think it was
blackmailing everybody,” said a source.
“That was his business play—blackmail. Not financial services advice,” he added. “Please, that’s
ridiculous.”
—
It turns out that in 1996 Bob Fitrakis of the Columbus Free Press dug into this story. He was looking into
a local political controversy when he first came across the name Jeffrey Epstein.
Southern Air Transport, then a scandal-plagued, CIA-owned airline that gained infamy in the 1980s
for shuttling weapons to the contras and trafficking cocaine, had abruptly decided to move its world
headquarters to Columbus, Ohio. The city’s wealthiest man, Leslie Wexner, was rumored to be behind the
move and was using the planes to transport merchandise to his Limited stores.
“We were looking at a story on how Southern Air Transport came to Columbus. How did this CIA connected airline end up in Columbus? And people said, well, it’s Wexner. But it’s not really Wexner.
Epstein’s handling all the logistics for him,” said Fitrakis.
Fitrakis started asking around about Epstein, a supposed money manager from Manhattan whom local
officials would jokingly refer to as “Les’s gal Friday.” Wexner’s relationship with Epstein had seemed to
materialize out of nowhere and was a puzzle to many in Columbus. The L Brands founder was a
deliberate and deeply shy man, born and raised in Ohio, who dressed in carefully coordinated suits and
didn’t marry until he was middle-aged. Epstein, with his booming Brooklyn accent, tracksuits, and
unabashed social climbing, was a different breed.
Fitrakis soon learned that Epstein had consolidated enormous power over Wexner’s life and finances
in just a few years after the two met in the mid-1980s. The Limited founder had gifted Epstein a $70
million home in Manhattan, put him at the helm of his family’s foundations, and signed over durable
power of attorney—allowing Epstein unrestricted access to Wexner’s billions.
When Fitrakis checked with his sources from the Ohio inspector general’s office, he found that Epstein
was also on their radar.
“They used to call [Epstein] ‘the boyfriend,’” said Fitrakis. “There was concern by the inspector
general; they were concerned whether or not Epstein was blackmailing Wexner.”
“Everyone thought [Wexner] was enthralled. I mean, they thought it was like Rasputin,” he said. “And
a lot of them suspected it was sexual.”
next
The Smart Set
Brockman, Dershowitz, and the “Intellectual Enablers 85s
CHAPTER 12:
THE POLITICIAN
1. Terrence K. Williams (@w_terrence), “Died of SUICIDE on 24/7 SUICIDE WATCH ? Yeah right! How does that happen #JefferyEpstein
had information on Bill Clinton & now he’s dead I see #TrumpBodyCount trending,” Twitter, Aug. 10, 2019, 2:26 p.m.,
twitter.com/w_terrence/status/1160256105399967744.
2. Landon Thomas Jr., “Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery,” New York, Oct. 29, 2002,
nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/n_7912/.
3. Alana Goodman, “Bill Clinton in 2001: ‘I’ve Never Had More Money in My Life,’” Washington Free Beacon, Oct. 13, 2015,
freebeacon.com/issues/bill-clinton-in-2001-ive-never-had-more-money-in-my-life/.
4. Taylor Nicole Rogers, “Here Are All the Politicians Jeffrey Epstein, the Money Manager Arrested on Charges of Sex Trafficking, Has
Donated To,” Business Insider, July 11, 2019, www.businessinsider.in/miscellaneous/here-are-all-the-politicians-jeffrey-epstein-themoney-manager-arrested-on-charges-of-sex-trafficking-has-donated-to/slidelist/70183512.cms.
5. Emily Shugerman and Suzi Parker, “Jeffrey Epstein Visited Clinton White House Multiple Times in Early ’90s,” Daily Beast, July 24, 2019,
www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epstein-visited-clinton-white-house-multiple-times-in-early-90s.
6. Shugerman and Parker, “Jeffrey Epstein Visited Clinton White House Multiple Times in Early ’90s.”
7. Pilar Melendez, “Bill Clinton Failed to Mention His Intimate 1995 Dinner with Epstein,” Daily Beast, July 11, 2019,
www.thedailybeast.com/bill-clinton-failed-to-mention-his-intimate-1995-dinner-with-epstein.
8. Angelo Fichera and Saranac Hale Spencer, “The Epstein Connections Fueling Conspiracy Theories,” FactCheck.org, Aug. 15, 2019,
www.factcheck.org/2019/08/the-epstein-connections-fueling-conspiracy-theories/.
9. Carol Felsenthal, Clinton in Exile: A President out of the White House (New York: Harper, 2008).
10. Thomas, “Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery.”
11. Thomas, “Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery.”
12. Conchita Sarnoff, TrafficKing: The Jeffrey Epstein Case (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020).
13. www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Giuffre-unseal.pdf.
14. Martha Ross, “Chelsea Clinton Denies She Was Ever Close Friends with Jeffrey Epstein’s Alleged ‘Madam,’” Mercury News, July 22,
2019, www.mercurynews.com/2019/07/22/chelsea-clinton-denies-she-was-ever-close-friends-with-jeffrey-epsteins-alleged-madam/.
15. Angel Ureña (@angelurena), “Statement on Jeffrey Epstein,” Twitter, July 8, 2019, 6:27 p.m.,
twitter.com/angelurena/status/1148357927625023490?lang=en.
16. Jacob Bernstein, “Whatever Happened to Ghislaine Maxwell’s Plan to Save the Oceans?,” New York Times, Aug. 14, 2019,
www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/style/ghislaine-maxwell-terramar-boats-jeffrey-epstein.html.
17. “Sustainable Oceans Alliance: Impacting the SGDs,” Clinton Foundation, Dec. 22, 2016, www.clintonfoundation.org/clinton-globalinitiative/commitments/sustainable-oceans-alliance-impacting-sgds.
18. Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement (New York:
Penguin, 2019).
19. Kat Tenbarge, “Trump Addresses Jeffrey Epstein Connection, Claims the Two Haven’t Spoken in 15 Years After a ‘Falling Out,’”
Business Insider, July 9, 2019, www.businessinsider.com/trump-epstein-had-falling-out-havent-spoken-in-15-years-2019-7.
20. Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman, “Jeffrey Epstein Was a ‘Terrific Guy,’ Donald Trump Once Said. Now He’s ‘Not a Fan,’” New York
Times, July 9, 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/us/politics/trump-epstein.html.
21. Vicky Ward, “Jeffrey Epstein’s Sick Story Played Out for Years in Plain Sight,” Daily Beast, July 9, 2019,
www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epsteins-sick-story-played-out-for-years-in-plain-sight.
22. Julie K. Brown, “How a Future Trump Cabinet Member Gave a Serial Sex Abuser the Deal of a Lifetime,” Miami Herald, Nov. 28, 2018,
www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article220097825.html.
23. Kevin Breuninger and Valerie Block, “Trump Labor Secretary Alex Acosta Resigns amid Pressure from Jeffrey Epstein Sex Traffic
Case,” CNBC, July 12, 2019, www.cnbc.com/2019/07/12/labor-secretary-alex-acosta-is-resigning-as-pressure-mounts-from-jeffreyepstein-case.html.
24. Sara Nathan and Mara Siegler, “Jeffrey Epstein’s Gal Pal Ghislaine Maxwell Spotted at In-N-Out Burger in First Photos Since His
Death,” New York Post, Aug. 16, 2019, nypost.com/2019/08/15/jeffrey-epsteins-gal-pal-ghislaine-maxwell-spotted-at-in-n-out-burger-infirst-photos-since-his-death/.
25. Terrence K. Williams (@w_terrence), “Died of SUICIDE on 24/7 SUICIDE WATCH ? Yeah right! How does that happen
#JefferyEpstein had information on Bill Clinton & now he’s dead I see #TrumpBodyCount trending,” Twitter, Aug. 10, 2019, 2:26 p.m.,
twitter.com/w_terrence/status/1160256105399967744.
26. Quint Forgey, “Trump Defends Sharing Clinton-Epstein Conspiracy Theory,” Politico, Aug. 13, 2019,
www.politico.com/story/2019/08/13/trump-clinton-epstein-conspiracy-theory-1460646.
27. Kelsey Tamborrino, “Kellyanne Conway on Epstein’s Death: Trump Wants Everything Investigated,” Politico, Aug. 11, 2019,
www.politico.com/story/2019/08/11/jeffrey-epstein-kellyanne-conway-trump-clinton-1457217.
28. Rebecca Morin, “Spokesman: Bill Clinton ‘Knows Nothing’ About ‘Terrible Crimes’ Alleged Against Epstein,” USA Today, July 8, 2019,
www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/07/08/bill-clinton-knows-nothing-jeffrey-epsteins-alleged-crimes/1679345001/.
CHAPTER 13: EPSTEIN’S SECRET
1. Mary Hanbury, “Victoria’s Secret Head Les Wexner Describes How He Met Convicted Sex Offender Jeffrey Epstein in a 500-Word
Letter to Members of His Charitable Foundation,” Business Insider, Aug. 8, 2019, www.businessinsider.com/les-wexner-describes-howhe-met-jeffrey-epstein-2019-8.
2. William D. Cohan, “How Jeffrey Epstein Got His Hooks into Les Wexner,” Vanity Fair, Aug. 8, 2019,
www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/how-jeffrey-epstein-got-his-hooks-into-les-wexner.
3. Cohan, “How Jeffrey Epstein Got His Hooks into Les Wexner.”
4. Landon Thomas Jr., “Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery,” New York, Oct. 29, 2002,
nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/n_7912/.
5. Hanbury, “Victoria’s Secret Head Les Wexner Describes How He Met Convicted Sex Offender Jeffrey Epstein in a 500-Word Letter to
Members of His Charitable Foundation.”
6. int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/1500-alicia-arden-police-report/04e6cef6bfb8b25c8684/optimized/full.pdf.
7. Emily Steel et al., “How Jeffrey Epstein Used the Billionaire Behind Victoria’s Secret for Wealth and Women,” New York Times, July 25,
2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/business/jeffrey-epstein-wexner-victorias-secret.html.
8. “Jeffrey Epstein Accuser Maria Farmer Says Ghislaine Maxwell Threatened Her Life, FBI ‘Failed’ Her,” CBS News, Nov. 19, 2019,
www.cbsnews.com/news/jeffrey-epstein-accuser-maria-farmer-says-ghislaine-maxwell-threatened-her-life-after-assault-fbi-failed/.
9. Steel et al., “How Jeffrey Epstein Used the Billionaire Behind Victoria’s Secret for Wealth and Women.”
10. Joe Nocera, “More Questions About How Jeffrey Epstein Got Island-Owning Rich,” Bloomberg, July 17, 2019,
www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-17/more-questions-about-how-jeffrey-epstein-got-island-owning-rich.
11. Mark Remillard, “Billionaire Businessman Leslie Wexner Refuses to Reveal Full Scope of Jeffrey Epstein’s Alleged Multimillion-Dollar
Theft,” ABC News, Jan. 23, 2020, www.abcnews.go.com/US/billionaire-businessman-leslie-wexner-refuses-reveal-full-scope/story?
id=68461262.
12. Julie Baumgold, “The Bachelor Billionaire: On Pins and Needles with Leslie Wexner,” New York, Aug. 5, 1985
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