So You Thought You’d Heard Enough about Jeffrey Epstein?

 

Back in 2019, the first time Jeffrey Epstein was the name on everyone’s lips, the New York Times published the bizarre story of Leslie H. Wexner. The billionaire founder of Victoria’s Secret, this guy basically signed over his life — and much of his fortune — to Epstein. This went on for at least 16 years.

Wexner gave Epstein power of attorney, and with it the ability to buy, sell, or sign for anything in Wexner’s name, thereby affording him extraordinary access to, and power over, the personal finances of an extremely wealthy man.

Ostensibly Wexner had hired Epstein as a financial advisor, yet no one at L Brands — parent company of Victoria’s Secret— saw any official record of employment or compensation. Over a decade and a half, Epstein took over most, if not all, of Wexner’s personal investments, including substantial real estate holdings. Epstein transferred ownership of a lot of those properties to himself.

This baffled and disturbed other executives at L Brands, several of whom went on record for the story. Epstein was imperious with everyone in the company, and was known to grope female employees with impunity. When complaints made it up to Wexner, he swept them under the rug. As Epstein’s power over him grew, he froze out old friends and colleagues, both inside and outside the company.

The story made a few waves at the time, certainly at L Brands, and Wexner’s profile is now quite low. But when Epstein died in prison, the story more-or-less died with him.

But revisiting it now, it’s clear that the Times, in its political prudishness, walked right to the edge of drawing the obvious conclusions, but refused to connect the dots. Nowhere in the article do they even speculate about the nature of Epstein’s hold over Wexner. They dance around it — Epstein’s sex-trafficking was by then common knowledge, after all — but they were too wary of relying on circumstantial evidence to come right out and say it.

So allow me. Every time I’ve been a juror, the judge instructed us to use our own judgment when weighing circumstantial evidence, so that’s what I’ll do. Here is my circumstantial, but pretty obvious, read.

It is inconceivable that Epstein was hired for his financial expertise, which was always minimal, and possibly non-existent. Far more likely is that Wexner met Epstein at some event, where they “discovered” that they each had exotic tastes, specifically for underage girls. Who knows how that conversation went, but we can imagine Epstein commiserating about how society so totally misunderstands the needs and urges of people like Wexner. Masters of the universe need love too.

Perhaps Epstein told Wexner that he knew someone who knew someone who could tend to those needs and urges, wink-wink. One thing led to another, and voila, Epstein is sitting in Wexner’s office showing him video of himself doing things that carry twenty-year prison sentences. From that moment on, Epstein owned Wexner, and he knew the owner’s manual inside and out.

Epstein ultimately became a billionaire in his own right, with huge holdings in real estate and financial assets of every stripe. But his nest egg, the thing that got him launched into the financial big leagues — despite little or no financial acumen — was the large fortune he systematically transferred from Wexner to himself.

Unlike most Trump scandals, the Epstein affair is managing to hold my attention. What I’m drawn to is not so much the Trump aspects of it, explosive as they are, as the workings of the Epstein business. We are nowhere near the bottom of that sordid story, and I am not the only one looking at this web of depravity and thinking “Follow the money.”

Sen. Wyden of Oregon is certainly thinking it, and from the floor of the Senate. He’s been quite assertive about how much money there is to follow, and the labyrinth of banks you have to go through — two of them Russian, one of them Deutsche Bank — to follow it.

Fun fact: Before Bernie Madoff, a company called Towers Financial held the record for biggest Ponzi scheme ever. In the early nineties, Towers executives bilked investors for at least $492 million. The CEO and two lieutenants ended up with lengthy prison sentences, leaving one lone co-conspirator to remain unindicted. Yes, that would be Jeffrey Epstein, by most accounts the actual architect and day-to-day manager of the scheme. And the only one who skated.

Another fun fact: Epstein had murky connections to Israeli intelligence and the Russian mafia, both through Robert Maxwell, the British tabloid publisher, who fell off his yacht and died in 1991, and who may or may not have been murdered. Maxwell was once a business partner of Semion Mogilievich, the undisputed ruler of the Russian Mafia, who is credited, back in 1999, with placing Putin in his current job. Maxwell also had ties to Zionism in general and Mossad in particular, and is likely to have shared all those connections with Epstein. And, oh yes, Maxwell had a daughter named Ghislaine, whose relationship to Epstein is now legendary.

Again, this is all speculation, and I won’t even attempt to understand the nature of these connections. But let’s say there was enough smoke to assume some fire. It's amazing how many tangled webs are begging to be unravelled, only some of them having to do with Trump.

The more we know about Jeffrey Epstein, the clearer it becomes that his reputation as a so-called financial genius was, right from the start, an elaborate fiction. His real genius was for financial fraud, and for that, blackmail was an essential component.

Epstein had a gift for combining business with pleasure. Naturally drawn to underage girls, he created a business model that monetized that predilection, mostly through compromising videos of rich people with lots to hide.

It’s been reported that among the many thousands of files that — depending on how Pam Bondi’s day is going — do, or do not, exist, there are several libraries of video material. One can only imagine, and with great disgust, who and what is in those videos.

How many rich and powerful men gave in to the temptations Epstein dangled in front of them? How many of them got the deluxe blackmail treatment, like Leslie Wexner? We may never get these answers — the rich are good at deflecting stuff like this.

The parallels between Epstein’s life and Trump’s remain uncanny. Both were prodigious con men, with all the sleazy amorality that requires. Both had an uncanny knack for slithering out of serious criminal charges while their buddies went to prison. Both had sketchy connections to Russia, and to organized crime figures on several continents.

They were made for each, and it’s quite clear that they both knew it. They happily used each other for their own debauched ends.

If only their debauchery had taken down more than one of them.