Les Wexner Deposition: The House Epstein Investigation

On February 18, 2026, the iron gate of the Wexner estate in New Albany, Ohio, finally yielded. Inside the sprawling mansion, Les Wexner the 88-year-old architect of the Victoria’s Secret empire sat for a five-hour deposition that served as a long-overdue accounting of his thirty-year entanglement with Jeffrey Epstein.

The air in the room was thick with the weight of three million newly released Department of Justice records. Wexner found himself in the hot seat not merely as a witness, but as a man whose name appears over 4,000 times in the Epstein files a figure cited with DOJ-level authority by Attorney General Pam Bondi. For years, Wexner has cultivated the image of a “True North” moral leader, yet he was forced to testify under the shadow of a “secondary co-conspirator” label found in restored FBI files. While the FBI’s 2019 caveat noted “limited evidence regarding his involvement,” the mere existence of the label brought the retail legend to a reckoning that no amount of philanthropic gilding could obscure.

1. The “I’ll F***ing Kill You” Moment: The Mask of Containment

The most visceral moment of the five-hour session didn’t come from a bombshell revelation about the past, but from the raw tension of the present. During a break, a hot mic captured Wexner’s lead attorney, Michael Levy, delivering a chillingly blunt directive to his client.

“I’ll f***ing kill you if you answer another question with more than five words, okay?”

To the casual observer, it sounded like a joke; to the investigative eye, it was a moment of calculated absurdity. The transcript reveals a billionaire prone to self-incriminating “rambling,” veering into long-winded tangents about his Aunt Ida’s $5,000 loan and the history of multi-division retailing. Levy’s threat was the sound of a defense team desperately trying to maintain a strategic vacuum. They weren’t just protecting a client; they were attempting to contain a man whose expansive narratives threatened to collapse the carefully curated wall of “professional distance” he had built around his relationship with a predator.

2. The $1.3 Billion Disconnect: Fiduciary Theater

The central tension of Wexner’s testimony lies in the staggering gap between his reputation as a retail genius and his claimed ignorance of his own bank accounts. Wexner famously micromanaged his 20-division empire, even personally inventorying the “forks and spoons” in his home for “accuracy” and “buttoned-up” management. Yet, when confronted with the math of Epstein’s tenure, he retreated into a sophisticated amnesia.

Wexner testified he was “effing shocked” and “appalled” to learn that Epstein the man he hired for his supposed “conservative” management and “accuracy” had siphoned approximately $1.3 billion in stock transfers through managed trusts and diverted $20 million from Wexner’s charitable foundations. Wexner’s defense rests on the idea that he granted “unfettered power of attorney” to a man who then pillaged his wealth. The implausibility is breathtaking: a man who demands a precise count of his silverware somehow failed to notice a billion-dollar crater in his personal fortune. It suggests not a lack of oversight, but a strategic decision to look away.

3. The “Olympic-Level Con”: A Masterclass in Victimhood

Wexner’s primary defensive maneuver was to pivot from benefactor to victim. He repeatedly characterized Epstein as a “world-class, Olympic all-time con artist” who “lived a double life,” comparing him to a bank robber who “robs many banks.”

To bolster this narrative of total deception, Wexner shared a detail that was both pathetic and revealing: Epstein would call him claiming to be in Switzerland or meeting with the King of Saudi Arabia, while Wexner now believes the man was “probably in bed in New York.” Despite these “diabolical” maneuvers, Wexner insisted he remained oblivious, famously stating:

“Absolutely not. I’ve asked myself that question over and over, why I didn’t see… if there should’ve been a clue or something that I should’ve picked up on. There’s nothing that I can recall. Not even a clue of a clue.”

He even attempted to minimize the physical assets Epstein acquired through their partnership, describing Epstein’s private island, Little St. James, as a “crummy island” and a “pile of rocks.” It is a classic rhetorical trick: by devaluing the spoils, he seeks to devalue the significance of the partnership that funded them.

4. The Victoria’s Secret Red Flags: Warnings Dismissed

The “clue of a clue” defense crumbles when measured against the documented warnings Wexner received as early as 1993. Cynthia Fields, then-president of Victoria’s Secret, alerted him that Epstein was posing as a talent scout to “pick up women.” In 1997, the assault on Alicia Arden in a Santa Monica hotel room provided a second, darker data point.

Wexner admitted he was “mad” at the time, but his response was a playground-level deflection. He testified that he confronted Epstein, only to accept a simple, condescending denial: “Do you think I’m stupid?” For a man who built a 10,000-store empire on the ability to read people and trends, accepting such a transparent brush-off is an admission of either extreme naivety or willful negligence. He chose to prioritize the word of his fiduciary over the safety of the women who fueled his brand’s success, maintaining the relationship for another decade after the “stupid” denial.

5. The Empty Side of the Table: A Partisan Boycott

The deposition wasn’t just a legal proceeding; it was a political Rorschach test. In an extraordinary move, every one of the 25 Republican members of the House Oversight Committee boycotted the session. While Democratic lawmakers traveled to the Ohio mansion during a “District Work Period” recess, the GOP seats remained empty.

Democrats like Robert Garcia and Jasmine Crockett used the moment to frame the boycott as a blatant attempt to “protect a major donor,” urging the public to “follow the money.” The optics were devastating: half of the committee responsible for federal oversight refused to show up for the questioning of a man whose financial machinery empowered a global trafficking network. It highlighted a deep partisan fissure, where the pursuit of the truth about the Epstein files appears to stop at the doorstep of the billionaire class.

Conclusion: The “True North” and the Smoking Gun

Les Wexner concluded his testimony by invoking his “True North” moral compass, attempting to preserve the image of a man whose ethics were merely victimized by a master con. But the record betrays the “professional distance” he claimed for five hours.

The “smoking gun” of the deposition is a 2003 birthday card Wexner sent to Epstein. It didn’t reflect the cold, detached relationship of a client and a manager. It was signed, “Your friend Leslie,” and featured a crude, hand-drawn pair of breasts. This scrap of paper mocks the “strictly business” narrative Wexner provided under oath.

As we look past the high-gloss facade of the New Albany mansion, the question remains: At what point does a billionaire’s “extreme naivety” become complicity? Wexner maintains he was the victim of a heist, but the survivors and the “Your friend Leslie” card place him at the center of a social and financial intimacy that provided Jeffrey Epstein with the ultimate shield: the credibility of a titan.