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Speaker 1: Hey, we're gonna dive right back into the Vanity Fair

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article by Gabriel Sherman and continue profiling the relationship between

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Jeffrey Epstein and Les Wexner. Let's jump right back in.

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Epstein claimed he could discern hidden patterns in financial markets,

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but his true money making gift was reading people. He

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surely recognized Wexner was deeply lonely. And for all of

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the shit, I give Jeffrey Epstein for not believing he's

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not a smart person like people said he was, or

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not believing that he's this epic financial wizard like people

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said he was. One thing I will say he had

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an uncanny ability to collect people.

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Speaker 2: There's no doubt about that now.

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Speaker 1: He would find weaknesses in people and target them. He

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would look at people's proclivities and target them. And at

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the end of the day, Jeffrey Epstein was most certainly,

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most certainly somebody who zeroed in on wealthy and powerful

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people and did everything he could to bring them into

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the web. That is for sure a hallmark of Jeffrey Epstein.

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Business was less's life, said Wesner's childhood friend Peter Halliday,

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whose Ohio bank prepared the limited his first stock offering.

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Wexner was born in Dayton, Ohio, in nineteen thirty seven

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to Russian Jewish parents who worked in the garment business.

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And you know, you hear all of these stories, right,

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and they are the typical American success story from years

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gone by, you know, the same stories where people are

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still trying to pitch it to you now that it's

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the same way, right.

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Speaker 2: Oh, go to work, work hard at your nine.

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Speaker 1: Dollars an hour job, and one day you might have

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yourself a twelve hundred square foot house too.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, some American dream.

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Speaker 1: But back then, when less Wexner was around, that dream,

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well it was available. And unfortunately, this dickhead Les Wexner

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could have had this fantastic story of nothing coming from

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nothing to being this great businessman, but he squandered it. Instead,

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he'd rather paler around with Jeffrey Epstein. Instead, he'd rather

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enable Jeffrey Epstein's abuse. And according to Virginia, he also

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likes to take part. So you remember in the movie

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A Bronx Tale when Sonny says to Kolodjuno about wasted talent, Well,

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that's what we're seeing here all over the game board,

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folks with all of these rich, so called smart people

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wasted talent instead of helping the world, instead of doing

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some good in the world.

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Speaker 2: Well, you all know what they were up to. Instead.

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When Wexner entered high school.

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Speaker 1: His family moved from Dayton to Columbus, where his father, Harry,

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opened a small women's apparel store called Leslie's. It was

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tough moving into a new community. Less didn't make a

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mark for himself. Holladay said, Oh, did poor little Lessie

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not fit in with the other kids in the neighborhood.

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I mean, come on, really. Wexner hoped to become an architect,

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like Howard Rourke, the libertarian protagonist of Anne Rand's The Fountainhead.

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Harry insisted he studied business at Ohio State. Less briefly

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enrolled in law school, but dropped out to work for

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the family business. As the story goes, Less wanted Harry

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to carry a limited inventory focused on casual clothes, and

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when Harry did agreed, let's quit. In nineteen sixty three,

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Less open the limited with a five thousand dollars loan

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from his zan Eida. I built the business so I

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could create my own world. Less later told The New

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York Times. Within a year, Harry closed Leslie's and was

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working for less. Now look again, I'm a big fan

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of the American dream, right, I'm a big fan of

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people coming from nothing, scratching and clawing their way to

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get a little something. I've seen a lot of that

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in my life, a lot of it with my own

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family in fact. And there's nothing like getting to the

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top of the mountain when you've been stuck at the

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bottom for so long. You scratch and you claw, and

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you think back to the days where you didn't even

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know how you're gonna put food on the table. Got

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some crying kids. They want some new nikeer Jordan's. They

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want the new, latest, updated fads and trends. You're busy

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just trying to make ends meet. But when you work

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hard and you're diligent about your job, at least in

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the past, you were able to scratch out a little

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something something for yourself. Unless Wexner did a lot more

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than that, but again, wasted talent, he squandered it. Wexter

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may have been CEO, but it seemed that his mother,

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Bella was the boss.

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Speaker 2: All right. Let's be real.

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Speaker 1: If you're Italian and you're listening to this podcast, Well

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you know that your mother most certainly is the boss.

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For thirty four years, she served as the Limited corporate secretary.

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A former executive recalled that Bella belittled her son in

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meetings when she didn't like his ideas. It'll never work,

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don't do it. Bella would yell at him in front

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of his staff. What is she the grandmother from The

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Red Dragon, the Thomas Harris Hannibal Lecter movie. What is

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she running around telling Francis dollar Hide that if he

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wets the bed again, she's gonna cut it off. There's

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always you know, you look at these people like Les Wexner,

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and then you see like their parents, and you understand

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completely why they're such lunatics, why they're such maniacs and

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not well adjusted people. I remember sitting there thinking, how

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dare this woman? The executive said. Less seemed to be

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terrified of Bella. According to Measter, Less would sometimes stay

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at Measter's house in Palm Beach, so that Bella, whose

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Palm Beach house was near Less's, wouldn't know Less was

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in town. He was afraid of her. She was running

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his life. Measter said, And again, that's I've seen a

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lot of that with a lot of Italian friends. Right, Look,

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your mom plays a central role in your life when

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you're a Paisano for sure, and I mean honestly, with

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Italian parents. Italian moms, they want you to live home

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until you're married.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: You could be thirty five living home with your parents,

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and that's a pretty normal thing for uber Italian families.

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So I kind of understand the situation of mom's yelling

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at them all the time, and shit, here, I get that.

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So I don't know how that could be like a

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impediment on Les Wexner. Let's be real, you're that soft

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bro that your mom breaking your chops in front of

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your coworkers is so tough that you have to go

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and sleep at your friend's house. Get some backbone, bro,

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He's lucky his mom didn't show up to those boardroom

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meetings with a wooden spoon.

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Speaker 2: So I'll tell you what.

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Speaker 1: If I was ever paling around with somebody like Jeffrey Epstein,

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like I said, you won't have to worry about the cops,

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you won't have to worry about the FBI, My mother

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would beat the ever living shit out of me. And

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that's not a guess that's a promise, folks. Okay, grown

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ass man forty one years old would still get his

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ass whooped by his mother with a wooden spoon as

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she drags him to the FBI's office bya his ear. Factual,

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Ask anybody who knows my mother, that is exactly what

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would occur. By nineteen seventy six, the Limited operated one

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hundred stores. Two years later, Wexner risked bankrupting the company

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when he borrowed thirty million to acquire the logistics company

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Massed Industries, which operated a dozen factories in Asia and

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contracted with hundreds of others around the world. The Gamble

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proved to be Wexner's genius move, akin to McDonald's revolutionizing

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fast food. And it's not even hyperbole, right, what Limited did,

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what Les Wexner did with his companies is pretty amazing

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to start where he started and build it up to

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what he build.

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Speaker 2: It up to.

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Speaker 1: That from a business point of view as an entrepreneur,

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and you look at that, you say, holy shit, that's

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a quality job. Well, holy nice job. But that's where

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it ends for me. That's where the praise ends for me,

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because after he built it, well, that's when the exploitation began.

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Why can't any of these people just be decent human beings?

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Is it really that difficult. I'm not exactly what you

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call the you know, the happiest guy in the room

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by any stretch of the imagination. Right. I can be prickly,

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I can be confrontational all of that stuff, But at

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the end of the day, I want what's best for us,

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everybody around me, not just myself. And that goes for

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strangers as well. People like this, on the other hand, Well,

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let me tell you what these kind of people. They

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don't give a shit about nothing but themselves. By controlling

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production and shipping, Wexner globalized the apparel business. Wexner's core

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insight was that baby boomers viewed shopping as a form

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of entertainment. The limited supply chain allowed Wexner to rapidly

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roll out new clothing lines at lower cost and keep

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customers coming back. Look, the business model was solid. How

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many girls did you see growing up, people in my

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age range, you know, forty years old or so. How

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many times growing up when you were younger were girls

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wearing stuff from Victoria's Secret pink et cetera, et cetera.

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Speaker 2: Abercrombie and Fitch.

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Speaker 1: When I was growing up, pair of those Jeenes were

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like one hundred and twenty five bucks. So this guy's

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business model was solid. Les Wexner had a good business model,

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knew what he was doing as far as you know,

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this whole globalizing of the clothing industry. And if he

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would have just focused on that and stayed on course

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and continued on building his empire and not getting in

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bed literally with Jeffrey Epstein, well he wouldn't have any

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of these problems. So again, just like everybody else who

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has rolled into Jeffrey Epstein's life, I have no compassion,

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no empathy, and I really don't care what happens to

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these people at this point. I don't care if your

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business goes bust, and I certainly don't care if you

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go to prison, because honestly, with some of the accusations

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we've seen leveled at some of these people, they all

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be in prison. As shopping malls spread across the country,

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the limited boomed, Wexner went on an acquisition spree. By

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the nineteen eighties, he took over the Lane Brian and

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Lerner chains, the department store Henry Bendel, and a struggling

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Paulo Alto lingerie store called Victoria's Secret. At the time

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he met Epstein, the limited had an annual revenue of

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three billion dollars. Despite the success, Wexner remained little known

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outside Ohio. Meister recalled a party in Aspen when Donald

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Trump walked up to Wexter and said, nice to meet you. Now,

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how did you get so e f and rich? That

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sounds like something Trump would say, right, walk up to

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some dude, disregard all sorts of uh, you know, courtesies

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or whatever, Hey, asshole.

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Speaker 2: And'd you get so Fen rich?

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Speaker 1: As he's chomping on three McDonald's whopper, I mean three

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McDonald's big Max. Wexner and Epstein soon became virtually inseparable.

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Speaker 2: There were an odd pair.

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Speaker 1: Websner was in his late forties with a round face

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and big ears. Epstein was in his early thirties and

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dashing from the right angle. He looked like Richard Gear.

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What SAYSU Helen Keller, What do you mean, Richard Gear.

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That's one of the funniest comparisons I've heard yet, Richard Gear.

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Maybe if Richard Gear was Rocky Dennis from Mask, maybe

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that's what we're talking about here, Richard gear Huh, okay,

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all right? Les knows everything about me. He knows every

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experience I've had, Epstein once told a friend Wesner's public

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image continued to grow after his hiring Epstein. A nineteen

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eighty nine Boston Globe profile that detailed Wesner's rock reported

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that as September, first diary entry that year read.

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Speaker 2: I finally like myself.

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Speaker 1: In a film deposition featured in the Netflix documentary Filthy

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rich Brad Edwards, a lawyer for some of Epstein's survivors,

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asked Epstein if he had a sexual relationship with Wexner.

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Epstein denied it, and again there we talked about this yesterday.

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There are a lot of rumors to that effect, right,

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that Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein were involved romantically, that there

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was more there than a relationship.

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Speaker 2: Look, I don't I can't call it.

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Speaker 1: I wasn't there, folks, I didn't you know, I didn't

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witness anything firsthand. All we could do is talk about

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the speculation and the rumors. And it was a big

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enough question that Brad Edwards asked it. So I don't

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think that it's too out of line to wonder the

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same thing. Was there something else going on with Epstein

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and Les Wexner? Again with Epstein's psyche, it's not out

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of the realm of possibility in my opinion, that he

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would try and seduce somebody like Les Wexner.

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Speaker 2: Remember who we're dealing with here.

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Speaker 1: Merritt, the Limited Security chief, was unnerved by the sudden friendship.

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Merritt recalled a weekend in the late nineteen eighties when

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Wexner invited Epstein to shoot at targets on land Wexner

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owned in rural Ohio. Lest It started collecting guns, but

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less did know which end of a gun worked, Merritt said.

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Merritt recruited a world class trap shooter named Jim Forsbach

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to teach Wexner to shoot, but Merritt said Wexner relied

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on Epstein. Epstein had this magnum p I gun. He

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didn't know what he was doing. It looked like he

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had never taken it out of the holster. Merritt recalled,

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for sure, look these guys fake the funk all the time.

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Speaker 2: Right when you got all that money.

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Speaker 1: You can go out and get yourself a gigantic dirty

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Harry kind of gun. If you want doesn't mean you

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know how to use it. But for some reason, Les

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Wexner thought that Jeffrey Epstein, along with all of his fantastic,

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fashionable financial advice, was also the guy to go to

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to become a marksman. This Jeffrey Epstein sure was a

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jack of all trades, right, No, not really, Bobby, he

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was really a jack off of all trades. Epstein was

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a social connector who populated Wesner's introverted life with glittery people.

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Novelist Christina Oxenberg remembered being invited by Epstein to a

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dinner party at Wexner's Upper east Side townhouse not long

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after Epstein took over Wexner's finances. Less seemed like this rumpled,

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sweaty schlub. He was so ill at ease, and there

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was Jeffrey facilitating the conversation. Oxenburgh told me, you know,

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I'm not too sure about Christina Oxenberg. Honestly, folks, I'm

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always a bit cautious about members of the so called

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elite who come out and act like they're one of us,

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you know, regular common people. Very hard for me to

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at this point trust any of these so called elite.

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So even when Oxenberg first came out, I had questions

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about what she was talking about and stuff like that,

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and those questions still remain. Dershowitz said, the first time

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he met Epstein at the Martha's Vineyard home of Lynn

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Forrester de Rothschild, Epstein invited him to be a guest

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of honor at Wexner's upcoming birthday dinner. Jeffrey said something like,

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for a present, my friend Leslie Wexner wants me to

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invite the most important man I met this year. Dershowitz

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recalled the flattery worked. Dershowitz attended. Other guests included astronaut

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John Glenn and former Israeli Prime Minister Shimone Perez.

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Speaker 2: Well, of course it did.

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Speaker 1: We know how close Jeffrey Epstein was to a lot

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of people in that realm, the Shimone Perezs of the world,

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the Bill Clinton's of the world, the Donald Trumps of

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the world. We know how close he was to all

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of those people, the Ehud Baracks. So when you hear

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about people like Shimone Perez being around, you hear about

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all of these dignitaries and these people who had positions

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in governments around the world. It shouldn't shock you, especially

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when you look at what Epstein was building, at what

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he was really trying to mold here. People like Wexner

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were integral to his operations. All of these people, these rich,

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powerful people, all had a part to play, and every

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single one of them played their part in helping Jeffrey

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Epstein run this criminal enterprise for this long, Wexner's physical

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appearance changed. A former Victorious secret executive or called Wexner,

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died his hair, he hired a live in personal trainer,

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and adopted a new wardrobe. Less would wear the tightest

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jeans you saw. I don't know how he didn't cut

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off blood supply to his private parts, the former executive said.

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Wexner's colleagues referred to this look as Chairman's casual. So

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less Wexner went from being Captain Dorky dork Dorkington to

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rock and tight jeans like he's machine gun Kelly, all

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of a sudden hires a live in personal trainer. Him

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and Jeffrey Epstein are inseparable.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 1: The rumors stand were they engaged in a sexual relationship

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with each other? Epstein and Wexner, I have to say,

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I lean towards there might have been some sort of

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seduction there, but I'm hesitant to go all the way

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considering right, I need to have more tangible evidence, more

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people coming out and saying that before I can, you know,

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hitch my my cart to that horse. But it's certainly

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something worth exploring. According to sources, Epstein took an interest

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in Wesner's romantic life. In nineteen eighty five, New York

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magazine put Wexner on the cover with the headline the

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Bachelor Billionaire. Wechner dated, but the relationships didn't tend to last.

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Around the time Wesner met Epstein, Wexner broke up with

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a Columbus woman. According to Epstein, showed up at her

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house with a multimillion dollar check and told her to

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stay away from Wexner. The woman declined requests for comment.

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Well again, you see it still to this day. Jeffrey

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Epstein's lingering power Jeffrey Epstein's lingering shadow over people who

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were involved. People don't want to talk about it, people

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don't want to come forward, people don't want to go

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on the record. And then you see people like this

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woman who obviously got to pay out and you wonder

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what sort of clause they had to sign, right, because

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you know, people like Epstein, people like Wexner, they're gonna

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make sure that they're in control of the situation no

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matter what.

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Speaker 2: The friendship vexed.

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Speaker 1: Wexner's mother, Bella, Sources said she wanted Less to settle

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down and get married. Bella hated it Epstein she was

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so blunt, merit said. Around nineteen ninety, Wendy Measter introduced

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Wexner to a corporate lawyer in her late twenties named

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Abigail Coppel, who worked in the London office of Davis Polk,

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the limited's outside law firm. Abigail was so secretive about it.

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A friend from London recalled. She said, don't tell anyone.

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I don't want to jinx it. I mean, what are

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you twelve? Oh, don't tell anyone I'm dating Less Wexner.

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I don't want you to jinx it. But up to

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this point, until he met her, he was running around

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with Jeffrey Epstein, right changed his whole lifestyle, rocking some

333
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tight jeans, thinking he's in a boy band. What else

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was he doing with Jeffrey Epstein at this time? We

335
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know what Epstein was up to what exactly was good

336
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old less Wexner up to while he was hanging out

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with Jeffrey Epstein.

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Speaker 2: Well, we know what Virginia has had to say.

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Speaker 1: I wonder what all of those unnamed girls from Eastern

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Europe and elsewhere would have to say. I wonder what

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sort of song they would sing. But Epstein stayed very

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much in the picture. He reportedly arranged Wexner and co

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A Copple's prenuptial agreement and was one of fifty attendees

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at their January nineteen ninety three wedding ceremony. Wexner even

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gave Epstein bellis seat on the board of the Wexner Foundation.

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Speaker 2: Boy, isn't that nice? Huh?

347
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Speaker 1: Boots his mom off the board. All right, Mom, you

348
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gotta go fat enough for you. I'm gonna replace you

349
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with good old Jeffrey Epstein, mister solid reputation, pillar of

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the community, salt of the earth, Jeffrey Epstein.

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Speaker 2: What could possibly go wrong?

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Speaker 1: Epstein soon began traveling to Ohio with Gilann Maxwell, the

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on off girlfriend, co conspirator, general all around scusbag, fellow

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child abuser by people, serpent who had helped burnish his

355
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society connections in Manhattan.

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Speaker 2: She was with Jeffrey everywhere.

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Speaker 1: Merritt said, to some it seemed like the age appropriate

358
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Maxwell was a public front for Epstein's crimes involving underage girls.

359
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It's a useful beard situation, said Oxenberg, Maxwell's former friend.

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Epstein and Maxwell were also social with the Wexners outside

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of Ohio. When the Wexners traveled to Europe, Epstein and

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Maxwell joined them on their shopping trips, And Oxenburg is

363
00:24:40,240 --> 00:24:44,559
not wrong about that. I've always made the point that

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Maxwell and Epstein weren't in some kind of lovey relationship.

365
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There weren't you know, love birds who were engaging on

366
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this journey of love together. Hell No, calling a beard

367
00:25:00,759 --> 00:25:03,920
is the perfect explanation, honestly, because that's what she was.

368
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She was there to give Jeffrey Epstein credibility so he

369
00:25:07,640 --> 00:25:10,599
didn't look like a middle aged man without a girlfriend,

370
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without a wife, you know, those creepy types. So he

371
00:25:12,799 --> 00:25:15,640
didn't look like that, and also so she could open

372
00:25:15,680 --> 00:25:21,160
those doors to some of the more elite within that

373
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:26,519
world that Epstein and his gruff behavior didn't have access to.

374
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By this point, Epstein was representing himself as something of

375
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a problem solver for Wexner. One time, Epstein called Dershowitz

376
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and asked if the lawyer knew someone in the Clinton administration.

377
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Epstein claimed Wexner was in a panic because custom agents

378
00:25:47,920 --> 00:25:52,240
at Teterborough Airport in New Jersey sees thousands of dollars

379
00:25:52,240 --> 00:25:55,720
of Cuban cigars and fifty thousand dollars in cash from

380
00:25:55,720 --> 00:25:59,400
his private jet. Dershowitz said he did not know anyone

381
00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:02,799
who could help. A person close to Wesner's family with

382
00:26:02,960 --> 00:26:07,839
knowledge of the allegation emphatically deny that any event occurred.

383
00:26:08,480 --> 00:26:11,759
Vanity Fair has found no mention of the alleged incident

384
00:26:12,039 --> 00:26:18,839
in court or law enforcement records. Well, just because you

385
00:26:18,920 --> 00:26:22,759
can't find it in court records and law enforcement records,

386
00:26:23,240 --> 00:26:25,680
well it doesn't mean it didn't happen. We know that

387
00:26:25,799 --> 00:26:33,000
law enforcement in certain places, in certain situations are not

388
00:26:33,160 --> 00:26:38,240
exactly above board, and especially when we're dealing with people

389
00:26:38,279 --> 00:26:42,920
with this kind of money. The fact that they thought

390
00:26:42,960 --> 00:26:46,039
they could call Dershowitz also cracks me up. And you know,

391
00:26:46,039 --> 00:26:49,640
according to Dershowitz, well he didn't know anybody he can't help. Yeah, Okay,

392
00:26:50,920 --> 00:26:55,559
Dershowitz is smarmy folks, and he's slick. He's gonna be

393
00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:59,640
real careful what he says to people, especially journalists.

394
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Speaker 2: When it came to Jeffrey Epstein. During the nineteen nineties, both.

395
00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:11,880
Speaker 1: Epstein and Wesner's profile grew on the world stage. In

396
00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:16,160
nineteen ninety one, Wexner co founded a philanthropic organization of

397
00:27:16,240 --> 00:27:19,920
Jewish billionaires known as the Megagroup, which uses some of

398
00:27:19,960 --> 00:27:22,759
its vast resources to shape Middle East policy.

399
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Speaker 2: Now, the Megagroup is a huge, huge, huge part of

400
00:27:27,039 --> 00:27:28,240
this story.

401
00:27:29,039 --> 00:27:32,960
Speaker 1: All of these people behind the scenes working hand in hand,

402
00:27:33,279 --> 00:27:36,559
Wester Epstein, Ehud Barak, etc.

403
00:27:36,920 --> 00:27:37,119
Speaker 2: Etc.

404
00:27:37,599 --> 00:27:44,359
Speaker 1: We're talking about very, very, very powerful people, and Epstein

405
00:27:44,839 --> 00:27:52,079
had access to all of them. In two thousand and three,

406
00:27:52,480 --> 00:27:57,400
Wesner's foundation commissioned GOP messaging guru Frank Luntz to advise

407
00:27:57,440 --> 00:28:00,799
American Jewish leaders on had to rally support for Israel

408
00:28:01,519 --> 00:28:04,599
for a year, a solid year. You should be invoking

409
00:28:04,640 --> 00:28:07,640
the name of Sodom Hussein and how Israel was always

410
00:28:07,680 --> 00:28:11,240
behind American efforts to rid the world of this ruthless

411
00:28:11,240 --> 00:28:16,440
dictator and liberate their people. Lunch recommendation stated, so again,

412
00:28:16,960 --> 00:28:19,480
you have these people working in the mega group, people

413
00:28:19,519 --> 00:28:24,079
like Jeffrey Epstein with a lot of pull, a lot

414
00:28:24,119 --> 00:28:30,039
of push, and a lot of sway, and they're a

415
00:28:30,039 --> 00:28:33,279
hammering this home about Saddam, this message home about Saddam

416
00:28:33,359 --> 00:28:37,519
Hussein and how he's this big threat to Israel trying

417
00:28:37,559 --> 00:28:47,839
to impact American foreign policy. That is terrifying. Epstein kept

418
00:28:47,839 --> 00:28:51,279
close in that circle of influence. You an Ambassador Bill

419
00:28:51,359 --> 00:28:56,119
Richardson and Middle East Envoy George Mitchell allegedly participated in

420
00:28:56,200 --> 00:28:59,960
Epstein's sex ring, according to a lawsuit filed by Robert

421
00:29:00,480 --> 00:29:05,000
one hundred percent glad that that was involved and put

422
00:29:05,079 --> 00:29:09,279
into this story, because that's not mentioned enough. Those allegations

423
00:29:09,319 --> 00:29:13,079
by Virginia are not mentioned nowhere near enough when it

424
00:29:13,079 --> 00:29:19,440
comes to this story. We're talking about big time players here, folks,

425
00:29:19,680 --> 00:29:26,359
Bill Richardson and George Mitchell. How is the legacy media

426
00:29:26,480 --> 00:29:34,640
all over this? Richardson and Mitchell adamantly deny the allegations.

427
00:29:35,319 --> 00:29:40,400
Israeli Prime Minister whod Barrock was an Epstein confidant. Epstein

428
00:29:40,599 --> 00:29:43,880
invested one million dollars in one of Barrock's business ventures.

429
00:29:44,279 --> 00:29:48,079
Barack reportedly visited the East sixty sixth Street condo building

430
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Dershowitz told me he once arrived at Epstein's townhouse as

431
00:29:52,559 --> 00:29:56,200
Epstein and Barack were wrapping up lunch. On a chalkboard,

432
00:29:56,240 --> 00:29:58,359
Barack had drawn a map of how the West Bank

433
00:29:58,359 --> 00:30:01,920
should be divided. Barack could not be reached for comment.

434
00:30:03,119 --> 00:30:07,559
In twenty nineteen, he denied any wrongdoing related to the

435
00:30:07,680 --> 00:30:13,119
condo visit. Now we've talked about Ehud Barack extensively here

436
00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:16,759
on the podcast. In fact, I have a two part

437
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:20,440
deep dive into him and his relationship with Epstein in

438
00:30:20,480 --> 00:30:23,079
the catalog if you're interested in checking that out as well.

439
00:30:23,680 --> 00:30:27,000
But this is another high profile player on the stage,

440
00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:33,680
another big time intelligence guy. Palin around with Jeffrey Epstein,

441
00:30:33,920 --> 00:30:38,079
breaking bread with Jeffrey Ebstein, get a million dollars for

442
00:30:38,119 --> 00:30:41,640
his business from Jeffrey Epstein. But he had no idea.

443
00:30:41,799 --> 00:30:44,079
He didn't know who Jeffrey Epstein was or what he

444
00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:48,799
was doing. Stop But how dare you asked that conspiracy theorist.

445
00:30:50,440 --> 00:30:55,319
During his time as Wexner's financial guru, Epstein's holdings grew tremendously,

446
00:30:55,920 --> 00:30:59,839
sometimes by acquiring properties formerly owned by Wexner, such as

447
00:30:59,880 --> 00:31:03,039
the townhouse on East seventy first Streat Manhattan, one of

448
00:31:03,079 --> 00:31:06,720
the largest private homes in Manhattan. While it has been

449
00:31:06,759 --> 00:31:09,759
reported over the years that the home was transferred to

450
00:31:09,799 --> 00:31:13,160
him in a dollar transaction, and Epstein may have led

451
00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:17,039
people to believe that, documents show he paid Wexner twenty

452
00:31:17,160 --> 00:31:21,359
million for it. In Columbus, Epstein owned a ten thousand

453
00:31:21,359 --> 00:31:24,680
square foot house next to Wexner, and, according to Merritt,

454
00:31:24,839 --> 00:31:27,400
paid a below market price for one of the limited's

455
00:31:27,640 --> 00:31:31,039
private jets. So you see, Epstein was getting the Homi

456
00:31:31,079 --> 00:31:34,680
hookup working with less Wesner right, he was reaping all

457
00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:40,759
of the benefit. You know that Epstein was all over

458
00:31:41,559 --> 00:31:44,759
the benefits package that came with being Less Wexner's friend.

459
00:31:45,680 --> 00:31:47,480
And again, it was just all part of it for

460
00:31:47,559 --> 00:31:52,880
Jeffrey Epstein, all part of the big game. I guess

461
00:31:52,880 --> 00:31:57,240
he would call it. In Jeffrey Epstein's mind. Folks, remember

462
00:31:57,319 --> 00:31:59,640
that's what all of this really was. Everybody was just

463
00:31:59,759 --> 00:32:02,720
a piece on the chessboard, and to him it was

464
00:32:02,759 --> 00:32:07,000
a game. Meanwhile, real people were suffering, real people were

465
00:32:08,160 --> 00:32:11,640
having their lives ruined, all of these survivors, and to

466
00:32:11,720 --> 00:32:14,680
Jeffrey Epstein and all of his friends, though people like

467
00:32:14,759 --> 00:32:19,160
Ehud Barak, people like Les Wexner. It was just a game.

468
00:32:21,359 --> 00:32:26,319
During his time as Wexner's financial guru, Epstein's holdings grew tremendously,

469
00:32:26,960 --> 00:32:36,799
sometimes by acquiring properties formerly owned by Wexner. Sorry about that, folks,

470
00:32:36,799 --> 00:32:39,599
we already covered that part. Let's skip back down to

471
00:32:39,640 --> 00:32:44,880
where we were at. Epstein's predecessor, Harold Levin described a

472
00:32:44,920 --> 00:32:48,720
possible scenario by which Epstein could have taken control of assets.

473
00:32:49,279 --> 00:32:52,400
We didn't put a mortgage on any of those properties.

474
00:32:52,960 --> 00:32:55,480
We used the limited stock to buy them, so there

475
00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:59,680
were no leans, Levin said. In other words, because Wexner

476
00:32:59,720 --> 00:33:03,400
didn't oh banks any money, his properties could be controlled

477
00:33:03,440 --> 00:33:07,039
by Epstein and there would be scant public record of it.

478
00:33:08,160 --> 00:33:11,920
So the hustle was on right, folks. These guys were

479
00:33:11,960 --> 00:33:16,200
totally engaging in what they knew would be best for them,

480
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:20,559
as far as you know, taxes, paying their fair share,

481
00:33:21,279 --> 00:33:26,279
paying off any sort of you know, maybe if they're sued,

482
00:33:26,319 --> 00:33:29,079
there's no leans available because of the moves they're making.

483
00:33:29,720 --> 00:33:33,279
So again, doing all of the things that these scuzzbag

484
00:33:33,359 --> 00:33:39,400
billionaires love to do. And it happened over and over

485
00:33:39,720 --> 00:33:47,680
and over again, year after year. Jeffrey Epstein was the

486
00:33:47,759 --> 00:33:50,319
King of it. He was great at it. He was

487
00:33:50,359 --> 00:33:53,759
one of these guys that had this hustle down like

488
00:33:53,799 --> 00:33:56,880
it was nobody's business. You add that to the Gratz

489
00:33:56,920 --> 00:33:59,400
hustle and all of the other things he was working on,

490
00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:04,200
and boy, oh boy, you got yourselves quite the shit show.

491
00:34:06,519 --> 00:34:09,480
And throughout the whole entire thing, Jeffrey Epstein and Les

492
00:34:09,519 --> 00:34:15,199
Wexner were connected at the hip basically, as you can

493
00:34:15,239 --> 00:34:21,079
see so far from this article, Jeffrey Epstein and Les

494
00:34:21,079 --> 00:34:26,519
Wexner were very very close. Nobody else that was working

495
00:34:26,519 --> 00:34:29,320
for Wexner had the keys to the kingdom. Nobody else

496
00:34:29,360 --> 00:34:33,519
that was working for Wexner had full financial control about

497
00:34:33,559 --> 00:34:37,800
what over the country, I mean, over the company. But

498
00:34:37,880 --> 00:34:41,559
yet here's this Jeffrey Epstein character showing up out of nowhere,

499
00:34:42,519 --> 00:34:45,760
knocking all of Les Wexner's top dogs off of their

500
00:34:45,840 --> 00:34:52,920
perch and becoming the top dog himself. It's pretty amazing

501
00:34:52,960 --> 00:34:57,480
when you think about it. And then when you start

502
00:34:57,480 --> 00:34:59,920
to really get into the weeds and pull the kurt

503
00:35:00,079 --> 00:35:04,840
and back, it's obvious that there is more going on here,

504
00:35:05,239 --> 00:35:09,239
that there is more going on in the dark, dirty

505
00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:14,400
room that has been hidden by this veil of secrecy

506
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:21,079
for so long, and piece by piece, story by story,

507
00:35:24,239 --> 00:35:29,280
and day by day, things start to become much much

508
00:35:29,360 --> 00:35:34,360
clearer about what was going on with Jeffrey Epstein, Les Wexner,

509
00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:39,400
and the arrest of his gang that most certainly can't

510
00:35:39,400 --> 00:35:44,559
shoot straight. Let's dive right back in and pick up

511
00:35:45,400 --> 00:35:50,679
where we left off. As Epstein's wealth grew, his predatory

512
00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:54,719
behavior became more brazen. He sometimes used his connections to

513
00:35:54,800 --> 00:35:58,079
Victoria's Secret and his schemes a pattern at least some

514
00:35:58,159 --> 00:36:02,360
executives at the company were aware of. There's no doubt

515
00:36:02,400 --> 00:36:09,360
about it. Multiple people working with Victoria's Secret knew the deal,

516
00:36:11,000 --> 00:36:14,039
and less Wexner put the kabash on all of it.

517
00:36:14,079 --> 00:36:18,960
Would be my guess these people would bring complaints to

518
00:36:19,039 --> 00:36:24,039
less Wexner. He'd listen to their complaints, probably, oh yeah,

519
00:36:24,079 --> 00:36:27,559
I'll talk to Jeffrey. I'll take care of it, and

520
00:36:27,639 --> 00:36:30,960
then everything would just continue going in the same direction

521
00:36:31,079 --> 00:36:37,519
that it's been going. For these executives at Victoria's Secret

522
00:36:37,519 --> 00:36:42,280
to act like they had no idea is laughable at best. Now,

523
00:36:42,320 --> 00:36:44,519
I'm not saying they had an idea of the whole

524
00:36:44,639 --> 00:36:49,400
scope of the criminal enterprise, but you have to have

525
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:53,039
an idea of the type of sick bastard that Jeffrey

526
00:36:53,039 --> 00:37:00,719
Epstein is. One afternoon in the spring of nineteen ninety three,

527
00:37:01,159 --> 00:37:04,559
an executive rushed into the office of Victoria's Secret Catalog

528
00:37:04,599 --> 00:37:10,360
president Cynthia Fetus Fields with disturbing news. A model told

529
00:37:10,440 --> 00:37:13,679
a hairdresser at a photoshoot that a man named Jeffrey

530
00:37:13,719 --> 00:37:17,760
Epstein was running around New York presenting himself as a

531
00:37:17,840 --> 00:37:23,440
Victoria's Secret scout. Now we know Epstein definitely used this ploy.

532
00:37:24,039 --> 00:37:25,159
Speaker 2: We know that he.

533
00:37:25,199 --> 00:37:29,119
Speaker 1: Used the relationship with Les Wexner, and in turn, the

534
00:37:29,199 --> 00:37:35,239
relationship with Victoria's Secret to position himself and act as

535
00:37:35,280 --> 00:37:39,800
if he was some sort of talent scout for Victoria's Secret.

536
00:37:40,239 --> 00:37:44,159
That way, he could play into the dreams and the

537
00:37:44,199 --> 00:37:48,280
aspirations of these young girls, who all they wanted to

538
00:37:48,320 --> 00:37:52,360
do was model right, become the next face of insert

539
00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:59,079
trendy jeens here, and instead what they got was their

540
00:37:59,119 --> 00:38:06,599
whole entire life lives ruined by Jeffrey Epstein using Victoria's

541
00:38:06,599 --> 00:38:16,119
Secret l brands and less Wesner as a vehicle. Fields

542
00:38:16,159 --> 00:38:20,119
knew Epstein was problematic. Fields, then in her forties, had

543
00:38:20,159 --> 00:38:24,880
met him the previous year and rejected several inappropriate propositions

544
00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:27,880
from him to go out, one of which included a

545
00:38:27,960 --> 00:38:33,320
weekend date to Wesner's house in Aspen. Fields declined Epstein's advances.

546
00:38:33,679 --> 00:38:40,119
So obviously, Epstein and Wexner were close enough that Epstein

547
00:38:40,519 --> 00:38:45,519
felt comfortable inviting her out to Aspen to Wexner's pad

548
00:38:45,960 --> 00:38:52,440
for a weekend of according to her, an appropriate behavior.

549
00:38:52,679 --> 00:38:57,840
Whatever that means. Now, again, as you all know, whatever

550
00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:02,320
two adults do too, consenting adults do.

551
00:39:02,320 --> 00:39:04,760
Speaker 2: In a bedroom. I really don't care about one way

552
00:39:04,840 --> 00:39:05,239
or the other.

553
00:39:05,719 --> 00:39:09,159
Speaker 1: What you know, as long as people are consenting, it's

554
00:39:09,159 --> 00:39:13,679
really no one's business what happens in someone's bedroom. But

555
00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:16,440
that certainly is not the case here. What she is

556
00:39:16,480 --> 00:39:23,400
saying is that mister Epstein had some pretty inappropriate plans

557
00:39:23,920 --> 00:39:28,119
that Miss Fields wanted nothing to do with. And you

558
00:39:28,159 --> 00:39:33,119
see a pattern, right. Jeffrey Epstein's propositions and his fishing

559
00:39:33,159 --> 00:39:37,880
schemes very rarely worked on super successful women. Women who

560
00:39:37,920 --> 00:39:41,440
come from a confident place of you know, a home

561
00:39:41,480 --> 00:39:46,039
life where they were you know, had both parents around,

562
00:39:46,119 --> 00:39:51,760
where they had some sort of structure. A lot harder

563
00:39:51,760 --> 00:39:55,079
for Jeffrey Epstein and people like Jeffrey Epstein to get

564
00:39:55,079 --> 00:39:58,280
their hooks into people like that, and Epstein recognized that,

565
00:39:58,639 --> 00:40:01,320
and that's why he went after the kind of girls.

566
00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:01,559
Speaker 2: That he did.

567
00:40:04,280 --> 00:40:08,400
Speaker 1: Field sow the executive to report Epstein to Wexner immediately.

568
00:40:08,719 --> 00:40:12,039
According to a source briefed on the conversation, Less said

569
00:40:12,079 --> 00:40:14,880
he would stop it. The source recalled and like I

570
00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:17,599
just said a second ago, Yeah, right, he would. They

571
00:40:17,639 --> 00:40:20,519
went to Less Wexner. Wexner says, oh, sure, I got this.

572
00:40:20,639 --> 00:40:22,199
Don't worry. I'll take care of Jeffrey.

573
00:40:22,239 --> 00:40:23,239
Speaker 2: You don't worry about that.

574
00:40:23,679 --> 00:40:26,800
Speaker 1: I'll make sure he doesn't do that ever again. Meanwhile,

575
00:40:26,800 --> 00:40:30,639
they're paling around having some white Castle that night or

576
00:40:30,639 --> 00:40:33,559
whatever the hell it is. They're eating and yapping it

577
00:40:33,679 --> 00:40:40,159
up about their conquests. That's my guess. Anyway, we know

578
00:40:40,280 --> 00:40:43,000
that these people, the Leon Blacks of the world, the

579
00:40:43,079 --> 00:40:47,119
Jeffrey Epstein's of the world, the Less Wexner's of the world,

580
00:40:47,880 --> 00:40:52,920
aren't sitting around discussing world peace. They're not sitting around

581
00:40:53,480 --> 00:41:02,039
at the table talking about the betterment of mankind. And

582
00:41:02,159 --> 00:41:07,039
people like this, well, it's an exclusive club, folks, like

583
00:41:07,119 --> 00:41:14,320
I always say, fellow travelers. Merritt remembered one lunch around

584
00:41:14,320 --> 00:41:18,679
this time when Epstein boasted he was the personal director

585
00:41:18,760 --> 00:41:23,280
for Victoria's Secret. In May nineteen ninety seven, an aspiring

586
00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:26,639
model named Alicia Arden told the Santa Monica Police that

587
00:41:26,760 --> 00:41:30,400
Epstein sexually assaulted her in a hotel room after he

588
00:41:30,559 --> 00:41:34,719
posed as a Victorious Secret scout. So you look, the

589
00:41:34,760 --> 00:41:38,400
profile has been there for a hot minute with Jeffrey

590
00:41:38,440 --> 00:41:43,199
Epstein and trying to use his relationship with Les Wexner

591
00:41:43,440 --> 00:41:48,400
to further his disgusting desires. What it really comes down

592
00:41:48,440 --> 00:41:52,440
to at this point is what do you believe. Do

593
00:41:52,519 --> 00:41:57,000
you think that there's enough evidence there to point you

594
00:41:57,079 --> 00:42:00,760
in the direction that Les Wexner had no idea what

595
00:42:01,000 --> 00:42:04,239
was going on, that Les Wexner was just you know,

596
00:42:04,599 --> 00:42:10,280
a shrinking violet in all of this, or did Wexner

597
00:42:10,320 --> 00:42:15,920
have an idea of what was going on? Did Wexner

598
00:42:15,960 --> 00:42:19,079
have an idea that his good friend Jeffrey was a

599
00:42:19,119 --> 00:42:24,880
sick bastard. All the telltale signs were there, all the

600
00:42:24,920 --> 00:42:30,519
warning signs were there. In fact, according to this report,

601
00:42:31,199 --> 00:42:35,400
his own executives were reporting what was going on, what

602
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:39,400
the situation was, and that they had serious concerns about

603
00:42:39,599 --> 00:42:45,840
good old Jeffrey Epstein and What was Les Wexner the key,

604
00:42:46,159 --> 00:42:51,159
the king, the man down in Columbus, the guy who

605
00:42:51,840 --> 00:42:56,440
really set all the rules for the company. What did

606
00:42:56,480 --> 00:43:00,920
he do about it? Did he stop it? Did he

607
00:43:00,960 --> 00:43:06,360
get rid of Jeffrey Epstein? Did he initiate an investigation

608
00:43:06,760 --> 00:43:08,559
with all of his money and all of his ties

609
00:43:08,599 --> 00:43:11,800
to security? No, folks, he didn't do any of that.

610
00:43:12,239 --> 00:43:15,039
He continued to paler around with Jeffrey Epstein, and he

611
00:43:15,159 --> 00:43:22,840
continued to let Jeffrey Epstein have the keys to the kingdom. Again,

612
00:43:23,239 --> 00:43:29,960
do you really believe less Wexner had no idea. According

613
00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:34,039
to the harrowing story of accuser Maria Farmer, Epstein even

614
00:43:34,079 --> 00:43:38,960
brought the abuse to Wexner's doorstep in Ohio. Look, everyone

615
00:43:39,039 --> 00:43:41,639
listening to this podcast should be familiar with this story.

616
00:43:41,639 --> 00:43:42,119
Speaker 2: By now.

617
00:43:43,480 --> 00:43:48,320
Speaker 1: Maria came out and she really dished on what occurred

618
00:43:49,079 --> 00:43:52,360
when she was around Epstein and certainly about what happened

619
00:43:52,800 --> 00:43:58,599
at the house in New Albany. I had Maria on

620
00:43:58,719 --> 00:44:02,880
the podcast twice and she discussed her experience here on

621
00:44:02,920 --> 00:44:06,400
the podcast. You can find that in the catalog. She's

622
00:44:06,440 --> 00:44:09,880
also been on a ton of other shows, and if

623
00:44:09,920 --> 00:44:14,079
you're interested, you can just google Maria Farmer and interview,

624
00:44:14,440 --> 00:44:18,159
and you can find a ton of them. But Maria's

625
00:44:18,199 --> 00:44:24,960
story is, you know, it's a cautionary tale about these people,

626
00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:29,559
and it certainly shines a light right on the FBI

627
00:44:30,800 --> 00:44:34,719
and the limp wristed police services that are supposed to

628
00:44:34,800 --> 00:44:39,920
protect people like Maria who instead were beholden to a

629
00:44:39,960 --> 00:44:49,679
scumbag like Les Wexner. In the spring of nineteen ninety six,

630
00:44:50,079 --> 00:44:53,719
Farmer was miserable working as Epstein's personal assistant in New

631
00:44:53,800 --> 00:44:58,440
York when she received a dream assignment. Film producers wanted

632
00:44:58,440 --> 00:45:01,119
the twenty five year old to create paintings that would

633
00:45:01,159 --> 00:45:04,000
be featured in the Jack Nicholson movie As Good as

634
00:45:04,039 --> 00:45:08,320
It Gets. Epstein begged Farmer not to quit and made

635
00:45:08,320 --> 00:45:12,679
an incredible offer. His client, Les Wexner, wanted Farmer to

636
00:45:12,719 --> 00:45:15,920
spend the summer working on the paintings at Wexner's three

637
00:45:16,039 --> 00:45:19,880
hundred acre compound in the town Wexner was building from scratch,

638
00:45:20,760 --> 00:45:23,880
as reported and filthy rich. Farmer spoke to Vanity Fair

639
00:45:23,920 --> 00:45:27,199
reporters in two thousand and three, but the magazine did

640
00:45:27,239 --> 00:45:30,960
not publish her accusations against Epstein. And when they say

641
00:45:31,079 --> 00:45:36,960
Vanity Fair reporters, they mean Vicky Ward. So Vicky Ward

642
00:45:37,159 --> 00:45:39,800
had all of this information, right, and this is directly

643
00:45:39,800 --> 00:45:43,679
from Maria. Vicky Ward had all of this information. Maria

644
00:45:43,760 --> 00:45:46,599
Dish gave it all up, told everything she knew about

645
00:45:46,639 --> 00:45:51,320
Jeffrey Epstein to Vicky Ward. Vicky Ward and her editor

646
00:45:51,400 --> 00:45:54,480
Graydon Carter, well, they decide they're gonna kill that story.

647
00:45:54,679 --> 00:45:57,639
There's not enough there, We're not going to report on it.

648
00:45:58,760 --> 00:46:02,159
And now, mind you, this is all the way back

649
00:46:02,239 --> 00:46:05,079
in the mid nineties, okay, all the way back in

650
00:46:05,119 --> 00:46:11,800
the mid nineties, and these people, if they would have

651
00:46:11,840 --> 00:46:15,320
taken it seriously when Maria reported what was going on,

652
00:46:16,960 --> 00:46:19,960
how many people's lives would they have changed, how many

653
00:46:19,960 --> 00:46:22,480
people would not have had to go through the abuse,

654
00:46:26,280 --> 00:46:30,400
if law enforcement would have taken things seriously, if Vicky

655
00:46:30,440 --> 00:46:34,559
Ward would have done her job correctly. And now when

656
00:46:34,599 --> 00:46:38,360
she runs around acting like she's some kind of champion

657
00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:42,800
for these girls, it's honestly sickening. The grifting is just

658
00:46:43,199 --> 00:46:51,400
out of control. Vicky Ward and Vanity Fair, to be

659
00:46:51,440 --> 00:46:57,280
honest with you, are an embarrassment over that whole entire escapade. Now,

660
00:46:57,320 --> 00:47:00,559
obviously Graydon Carter is no longer with Vanity Fair, and

661
00:47:00,719 --> 00:47:04,719
Vanity Fair is doing a noble job here trying to

662
00:47:04,840 --> 00:47:07,199
get back on track. Right, this is a good article,

663
00:47:07,239 --> 00:47:09,519
this is good work, but we have to call it

664
00:47:09,519 --> 00:47:13,239
out for what it was. It was straight trash, straight garbage,

665
00:47:13,280 --> 00:47:17,039
straight propaganda, straight gas lighting, and in fact, it was

666
00:47:17,199 --> 00:47:22,280
enabling of Jeffrey Epstein. So let's just call it what

667
00:47:22,400 --> 00:47:27,039
it is, right, and let's name the reporter. Let's not

668
00:47:27,159 --> 00:47:30,159
just say a Vanity Fair reporter. That's kind of the

669
00:47:30,199 --> 00:47:36,960
punk way out right. Sometimes being uncomfortable is just part

670
00:47:37,000 --> 00:47:40,159
of it. And even if you know it's the publication

671
00:47:40,280 --> 00:47:43,440
that you're writing for or a company that you work for.

672
00:47:44,239 --> 00:47:46,440
When they're out of line and they're wrong, they're wrong.

673
00:47:47,880 --> 00:47:51,880
And Vicky Ward and Vanity Fair were way out of line.

674
00:47:52,880 --> 00:47:56,239
And in fact, that's the kind of behavior and the

675
00:47:56,360 --> 00:48:04,239
kind of negligence within a reporter that I can't ever forgive.

676
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:06,679
There is not a piece that Vicky Ward could write

677
00:48:07,159 --> 00:48:12,719
that I could even bother reading. At this point, although

678
00:48:12,760 --> 00:48:16,119
Farmer was broke and living in a tiny Greenwich Village apartment,

679
00:48:16,440 --> 00:48:20,320
her instinct was to turn it down. Epstein's relationship with

680
00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:24,199
Wexner seemed odd to her. Farmer recalled the first time

681
00:48:24,199 --> 00:48:27,440
Epstein gave her a tour of his townhouse. Jeffrey said,

682
00:48:27,840 --> 00:48:30,360
see all of this stuff. I don't need any of it.

683
00:48:30,679 --> 00:48:33,079
I could live in a tent, but Less gave this

684
00:48:33,119 --> 00:48:36,400
to me for a dollar. Less would do anything for me.

685
00:48:37,440 --> 00:48:39,360
And like I said, it's one thing to read it

686
00:48:39,400 --> 00:48:42,079
on the page here, right, and one thing to hear

687
00:48:42,159 --> 00:48:45,199
me relate it to you. It's another thing when Maria

688
00:48:45,280 --> 00:48:48,719
tells you in her own words. So I highly suggest

689
00:48:48,800 --> 00:48:52,079
you check out those interviews, either here or elsewhere or

690
00:48:52,079 --> 00:48:55,320
wherever you want to check them out, but you should

691
00:48:55,360 --> 00:48:58,880
definitely hear her in her own words. And I highly

692
00:48:58,920 --> 00:49:02,360
suggest you do that with all of the survivors because

693
00:49:02,400 --> 00:49:04,920
reading it's one thing. Hearing it from me is one thing.

694
00:49:04,960 --> 00:49:07,760
Hearing it from someone else is another. But when you

695
00:49:07,840 --> 00:49:10,880
hear it right from them, from the girls themselves, when

696
00:49:10,880 --> 00:49:14,840
they discuss what they went through, it has a much

697
00:49:14,920 --> 00:49:19,440
more visceral effect, at least it does on me, because

698
00:49:19,480 --> 00:49:26,280
there's no middleman there, right, there's no wiggle room. With

699
00:49:26,400 --> 00:49:29,119
all of the stories that these girls have told and

700
00:49:29,159 --> 00:49:34,400
the evidence that backs them up. I believe what they're

701
00:49:34,440 --> 00:49:37,559
saying here, folks. I believe their stories, and I believe

702
00:49:37,639 --> 00:49:40,519
that Jeffrey Epstein and all of these people named in

703
00:49:40,559 --> 00:49:47,199
the court documents all had a hand in this. Farmer

704
00:49:47,280 --> 00:49:50,760
was also unsettled by strange visitors coming and going at

705
00:49:50,760 --> 00:49:55,519
the house. She recalled government officials making pilgrimages to meet

706
00:49:55,559 --> 00:50:00,119
Epstein for unexplained reasons. And there was always a bevy

707
00:50:00,159 --> 00:50:08,840
of government officials, powerful business magnates, academics, scientists, you name it,

708
00:50:09,599 --> 00:50:14,400
buzzing around Jeffrey Epstein at his properties, hanging out at

709
00:50:14,400 --> 00:50:16,920
his house down on the island, whatever it may be.

710
00:50:17,320 --> 00:50:20,519
But they were always around him. What were they doing there?

711
00:50:20,639 --> 00:50:23,960
Why were they always around? What could he possibly have

712
00:50:24,440 --> 00:50:33,679
that they want? I don know rhetorical question, but obviously

713
00:50:33,960 --> 00:50:38,920
it still needs to be asked because the legacy media

714
00:50:39,400 --> 00:50:45,320
is not willing to take that leap when the writing

715
00:50:45,400 --> 00:50:48,320
is on the wall. All of these people that were

716
00:50:48,320 --> 00:50:52,239
hanging out over at Epstein's a level three sex offender's house,

717
00:50:52,320 --> 00:50:55,519
especially after the first arrest, all of these people have

718
00:50:55,599 --> 00:50:58,800
some explaining to do and to see them get off

719
00:50:58,840 --> 00:51:01,440
the hook, like Chelsea Ham got off the hook. And

720
00:51:01,679 --> 00:51:04,079
the way these people get treated with kid gloves over

721
00:51:04,119 --> 00:51:09,519
their relationship with Epstein, straight up bs, and we shouldn't

722
00:51:09,559 --> 00:51:13,280
be shocked obviously. I mean, Vicky Ward set the standard

723
00:51:13,360 --> 00:51:15,599
back in the day, so why should we be shocked

724
00:51:15,599 --> 00:51:21,920
when the rest of them follow suit. What frightened her most, though,

725
00:51:22,079 --> 00:51:25,960
were the children. Farmer said she witnessed Maxwell escorting countless

726
00:51:26,039 --> 00:51:29,599
high school age girls to meet Epstein, supposedly to interview

727
00:51:29,599 --> 00:51:34,079
for modeling jobs. Every afternoon, Gilane would run out saying

728
00:51:34,400 --> 00:51:38,559
I need to get new buyles. Farmer recalled. Maxwell's attorney

729
00:51:38,599 --> 00:51:43,440
did not respond to a request for comment. Now, Maria

730
00:51:44,039 --> 00:51:48,840
says that Gilan Maxwell would cruise places like Central Park,

731
00:51:49,159 --> 00:51:51,679
There was a school right down the block, the mall,

732
00:51:51,840 --> 00:51:54,599
you name it, any place that you can think of

733
00:51:54,679 --> 00:51:58,280
where teenage girls could be hanging out. And according to Maria,

734
00:51:58,719 --> 00:52:02,760
you know they were coming and going for modeling gigs,

735
00:52:02,760 --> 00:52:08,639
and this, that and the other thing. Meanwhile, under the surface,

736
00:52:09,400 --> 00:52:20,000
hidden just below, a whole entire scenario was unfolding. Nonetheless,

737
00:52:20,079 --> 00:52:23,440
Farmer accepted Epstein's offer, and that May she packed her

738
00:52:23,480 --> 00:52:27,719
supplies into a truck and drove west to Wexner's Ohio village.

739
00:52:28,280 --> 00:52:31,320
But what seemed like a dream would turn into a nightmare.

740
00:52:32,079 --> 00:52:34,920
This account is based on my interviews with Farmer and

741
00:52:35,000 --> 00:52:37,920
a sworn affid David she submitted in federal court in

742
00:52:37,960 --> 00:52:43,360
twenty nineteen. Now again, most of you here should be

743
00:52:43,400 --> 00:52:46,599
familiar with all of this stuff already. If you've been

744
00:52:46,599 --> 00:52:50,400
following this case, you know that Maria has been so

745
00:52:50,599 --> 00:52:55,480
vocal about what went down on that in that farmhouse

746
00:52:55,519 --> 00:53:02,159
at Wexner's property. Early in her stay, Farmer began to

747
00:53:02,159 --> 00:53:05,639
feel like she was being watched at all times. Maxwell

748
00:53:05,679 --> 00:53:08,719
called Farmer from New York, screaming at her because she

749
00:53:08,840 --> 00:53:12,760
accidentally spilled Hannah dye on a white rug. Gilaane yelled,

750
00:53:12,960 --> 00:53:16,280
You're going to have to leave right now. Jeffrey later

751
00:53:16,320 --> 00:53:21,320
called and apologized. Farmer recalled and Epstein and Maxwell. They

752
00:53:21,360 --> 00:53:23,800
really played good cop, bad cop off of each other,

753
00:53:24,039 --> 00:53:27,280
according to the survivors. One day it would be Maxwell,

754
00:53:27,320 --> 00:53:29,800
one day it would be Epstein. But they played good cop,

755
00:53:29,840 --> 00:53:33,679
bad cop off of each other. And that was another

756
00:53:33,719 --> 00:53:37,440
way to perpetuate the abuse, the mental abuse. Right, You

757
00:53:37,599 --> 00:53:40,480
never knew who your ally was going to be. It

758
00:53:40,599 --> 00:53:45,599
always kept you walking on eggshells with the both of them.

759
00:53:45,920 --> 00:53:49,239
In interviews, Farmer said she needed Abigail's permission to go

760
00:53:49,320 --> 00:53:53,400
jogging outside because the grounds were patrolled by armed guards

761
00:53:53,440 --> 00:53:57,960
and dogs. In a twenty nineteen statement to The Washington Post,

762
00:53:58,239 --> 00:54:02,400
the Wexner family said either Less nor Abigail knew who

763
00:54:02,440 --> 00:54:06,320
Farmer was before her accusations were made public. And while

764
00:54:06,320 --> 00:54:09,400
we don't know with whom Miss Farmer may have spoken,

765
00:54:09,840 --> 00:54:12,559
who may have claimed to be Miss Wexner, it was

766
00:54:12,679 --> 00:54:16,320
not Miss Wexner, a family spokesman set at the time.

767
00:54:16,920 --> 00:54:19,440
So again it comes down to what do you believe.

768
00:54:19,840 --> 00:54:23,440
Do you believe the Wexners or do you believe Maria's

769
00:54:23,519 --> 00:54:28,519
story which she's been dishing since the mid nineties. I

770
00:54:28,559 --> 00:54:34,400
know who I believe, but I'm not here to convince anybody. Right,

771
00:54:35,760 --> 00:54:39,519
everybody out there listening to this show well within the

772
00:54:39,599 --> 00:54:42,480
means of making up their own minds about what they believe.

773
00:54:44,199 --> 00:54:46,360
I think there's too many people that are trying to

774
00:54:46,360 --> 00:54:49,480
convince people of things when it comes to this case. Me,

775
00:54:50,440 --> 00:54:52,880
I'm just calling it how I see it. This is

776
00:54:53,800 --> 00:54:57,760
the Jeffrey Epstein shit show. From my perspective, that's all,

777
00:54:57,840 --> 00:55:02,599
nothing more, nothing less. But from the evidence that I've

778
00:55:02,639 --> 00:55:06,960
looked at the hundreds and thousands of articles that I've read,

779
00:55:08,039 --> 00:55:11,639
it's obvious that these girls. These women are telling the truth.

780
00:55:15,119 --> 00:55:18,679
Epstein and Maxwell were Farmer's only connection to the outside world.

781
00:55:19,239 --> 00:55:22,079
They flew in on weekends and took Farmer to see

782
00:55:22,119 --> 00:55:26,559
movies like Independence Day and go food shopping out Walmart. Now,

783
00:55:26,639 --> 00:55:29,840
I'm not sure if you're familiar with artists in residence,

784
00:55:30,159 --> 00:55:34,719
but it's usually a pretty solitary lifestyle. I have a

785
00:55:34,760 --> 00:55:38,400
couple of friends who have had the uh the luck

786
00:55:38,760 --> 00:55:42,199
to do similar things, but at like national parks and stuff.

787
00:55:42,920 --> 00:55:46,760
But it's a very lonely lifestyle. You're not around anybody.

788
00:55:46,760 --> 00:55:50,280
You're pretty much just involved in your artwork, trying to

789
00:55:50,360 --> 00:55:53,639
hit that elusive flow. Those of you out there who

790
00:55:53,639 --> 00:55:57,039
were artistic or who play sports, you know exactly what

791
00:55:57,079 --> 00:56:00,079
I mean about the flow. So when you're there by

792
00:56:00,119 --> 00:56:02,639
yourself and you're an artist or a musician or whatever

793
00:56:02,639 --> 00:56:07,159
it is, it's easier. So they say, to hit that flow.

794
00:56:08,199 --> 00:56:13,440
So it's a life of solitude, Farmer thought. Epstein and

795
00:56:13,480 --> 00:56:16,960
Maxwell acted more like kids than adults. They would do

796
00:56:17,079 --> 00:56:19,360
things like pants each other while waiting in line to

797
00:56:19,360 --> 00:56:23,519
buy movie tickets. Farmer recalled, so, no imagine this Oxford

798
00:56:23,599 --> 00:56:29,360
educated woman and mister Jeffrey Epstein financed mogul himself sitting

799
00:56:29,400 --> 00:56:32,840
around there and pantsing each other. Now, don't get it twisted.

800
00:56:34,360 --> 00:56:37,519
I like a good pantsing around the campfire every now

801
00:56:37,559 --> 00:56:41,159
and then, right, might be hammered out by the pool

802
00:56:42,280 --> 00:56:46,000
your cousin rolls by, and you can't help yourself because

803
00:56:46,000 --> 00:56:48,400
you grew up watching Beavis and butt Head. I get it.

804
00:56:49,440 --> 00:56:51,760
But when you're out at a movie theater and you're

805
00:56:51,800 --> 00:56:55,880
some big business professional and you're some Oxford trained and

806
00:56:56,519 --> 00:57:01,400
studious person like get that Maxwell, you probably shouldn't be

807
00:57:01,400 --> 00:57:08,280
pulling each other's pants off in public. Over time, socializing

808
00:57:08,320 --> 00:57:11,320
with a couple nearly twice her age felt almost normal.

809
00:57:11,880 --> 00:57:15,400
Farmer invited her two elementary school age brothers to live

810
00:57:15,440 --> 00:57:20,199
with her at Epstein's Ohio house. Les knows everything about me.

811
00:57:20,800 --> 00:57:24,320
He knows every experience I've had, Epstein once told a friend.

812
00:57:24,920 --> 00:57:28,320
And that's significant, right. It goes to the heart of

813
00:57:28,360 --> 00:57:32,719
it all, the fact that Wexner intimately knew Jeffrey Epstein.

814
00:57:32,920 --> 00:57:35,199
No matter what he tries to say, there are way

815
00:57:35,199 --> 00:57:39,199
too many people on the record, on the books who

816
00:57:39,280 --> 00:57:43,440
have said that this relationship was way tighter than Wexner's

817
00:57:43,440 --> 00:57:50,920
trying to let on one night about two months after

818
00:57:50,960 --> 00:57:54,559
she arrived in Ohio, Farmer said Epstein and Maxwell invited

819
00:57:54,559 --> 00:57:58,719
her to their bedroom and sexually assaulted her. Farmer said

820
00:57:58,760 --> 00:58:01,360
she fled, locked herself off in her room, and called

821
00:58:01,440 --> 00:58:05,400
nine to one one she set The sheriff's dispatcher responded,

822
00:58:05,639 --> 00:58:09,159
we worked for Wexner. Now imagine that. Huh you call

823
00:58:09,239 --> 00:58:15,719
the sheriff's department and you're greeted with that response. I'm

824
00:58:15,800 --> 00:58:20,519
terrified I've been sexually assaulted. H Okay, ma'am. What's your location. Oh,

825
00:58:20,639 --> 00:58:24,239
I'm over at Less Wexner's house in New Albany. Well, ma'am,

826
00:58:24,519 --> 00:58:30,880
we work for Less Wexner. What sort of dystopian handmaiden

827
00:58:30,960 --> 00:58:37,400
tails type shit is that? Terrified Farmer called her father

828
00:58:37,480 --> 00:58:41,119
in Kentucky. He agreed to drive overnight to pick her up.

829
00:58:41,880 --> 00:58:44,960
A spokesman for the Frankly County for the Franklin County,

830
00:58:45,000 --> 00:58:49,079
Ohio Sheriff's office confirmed to The Washington Post that its

831
00:58:49,119 --> 00:58:53,159
officers had been contracted for Wexner's security detail at the time,

832
00:58:53,559 --> 00:58:56,199
but said it had no remaining records of such a call.

833
00:58:56,400 --> 00:58:59,239
They never have any records remaining, right, and why did

834
00:58:59,320 --> 00:59:02,400
les Wester need a bunch of cops guarding him. What

835
00:59:02,519 --> 00:59:05,119
else was he up to? What was the Mega group

836
00:59:05,199 --> 00:59:12,480
up to? Is the legacy media ever going to ask

837
00:59:12,559 --> 00:59:15,800
these questions? Or are they just going to hint and

838
00:59:15,920 --> 00:59:22,159
walk around and make pretend that they're digging deep, Because

839
00:59:22,199 --> 00:59:25,360
there's a lot of glaring questions here, folks, that definitely

840
00:59:25,400 --> 00:59:30,039
need to be answered. Farmer said that when she returned

841
00:59:30,039 --> 00:59:33,000
to New York, her sixteen year old sister Annie, whom

842
00:59:33,039 --> 00:59:37,199
Epstein was also helping financially, revealed that Epstein and Maxwell

843
00:59:37,239 --> 00:59:41,719
had touched her inappropriately at Epstein's New Mexico ranch. Oh well,

844
00:59:41,760 --> 00:59:44,840
you know, I'll never pass up an opportunity to go

845
00:59:44,960 --> 00:59:50,320
harden the paint on Zoro Ranch and New Mexico. Anybody

846
00:59:50,320 --> 00:59:53,559
out there in New Mexico ever gonna raid this place?

847
00:59:54,000 --> 00:59:57,960
Maybe guy's ever gonna, you know, kick in an investigation

848
00:59:58,119 --> 01:00:02,639
perhaps and bring some people in to question them, anything,

849
01:00:02,800 --> 01:00:09,320
anything that even resembles an investigation. Nah, we're not gonna

850
01:00:09,320 --> 01:00:12,400
see that. I guess Bill Richardson still has way too

851
01:00:12,440 --> 01:00:15,920
much pull there. I guess the Santa Fe Institute still

852
01:00:15,960 --> 01:00:19,920
has way too much pull there. Very unfortunate that they're

853
01:00:19,920 --> 01:00:23,000
gonna let what happened in New Mexico die on the vine.

854
01:00:23,159 --> 01:00:26,880
At least they hope that's what's going to happen. Well,

855
01:00:28,599 --> 01:00:36,880
they might be in for a surprise. Officers said they

856
01:00:36,880 --> 01:00:40,039
had no jurisdiction in Ohio and instructed her to talk

857
01:00:40,079 --> 01:00:43,840
to the FBI instead. Farmer said she did, but the

858
01:00:43,920 --> 01:00:48,239
FBI never followed up. Now that shouldn't shock anybody. If

859
01:00:48,239 --> 01:00:51,000
you're listening to this podcast, you already know how I

860
01:00:51,119 --> 01:00:54,079
feel about the FBI. And I'm not talking about the

861
01:00:54,159 --> 01:00:57,199
rank and file guys. You know, ladies and men who

862
01:00:57,199 --> 01:00:59,760
get up every day and go out and try and

863
01:00:59,760 --> 01:01:02,880
cat that's real bad guys. My hat's off to people

864
01:01:02,920 --> 01:01:05,039
like that. It's a hard ass job. I certainly would

865
01:01:05,039 --> 01:01:08,519
never do it, but hey, hats off to you. My

866
01:01:08,599 --> 01:01:13,320
big problem is with the bureaucratic assholes, the morons who

867
01:01:13,400 --> 01:01:17,360
kill these cases, the people who have higher aspirations than

868
01:01:17,440 --> 01:01:20,320
just being oh, I'm going to be an FBI agent. No,

869
01:01:20,440 --> 01:01:23,079
these guys want to be politicians and judges and all

870
01:01:23,119 --> 01:01:29,719
the other nonsense. So things become highly politicized. And that's

871
01:01:29,760 --> 01:01:32,239
what happens with the FBI. What you think when things

872
01:01:32,280 --> 01:01:34,760
get kicked up, it doesn't just get lost in the

873
01:01:34,800 --> 01:01:42,679
Sauce magically disappear. In September nineteen ninety seven, Wexner celebrated

874
01:01:42,679 --> 01:01:45,639
his sixtieth birthday with a dinner at his Ohio estate.

875
01:01:46,320 --> 01:01:49,119
Meister says he used the occasion to once again tell

876
01:01:49,119 --> 01:01:53,519
Wexner how untrustworthy Epstein was. My wife and I told

877
01:01:53,599 --> 01:01:57,199
him and Abigail hundreds of times to stay away from Epstein,

878
01:01:57,400 --> 01:02:01,440
Measter said, in front of guests, including former Senator Joe

879
01:02:01,480 --> 01:02:05,800
Lieberman and real estate developer Marshall Rose. Meister said he

880
01:02:05,920 --> 01:02:09,800
begged Wexner to sever ties with Epstein. Less wouldn't listen.

881
01:02:09,880 --> 01:02:14,239
Measter said it was the last time Measter visited Wexner's house.

882
01:02:17,000 --> 01:02:19,800
It was obvious to anyone at that point that Les

883
01:02:19,840 --> 01:02:23,360
Wexner had made his decision on who his guy was,

884
01:02:23,719 --> 01:02:28,440
who his right hand was, who his you know, his

885
01:02:29,519 --> 01:02:33,000
number one confidant was going to be Jeffrey Epstein, and

886
01:02:33,039 --> 01:02:37,119
nobody was going to tell him any different. And nobody

887
01:02:37,159 --> 01:02:40,280
was able to tell a guy like Les Wexner any different.

888
01:02:40,920 --> 01:02:46,679
Nobody was twisting his arm. He chose Jeffrey Epstein as

889
01:02:46,719 --> 01:02:53,960
a confidante, as a best friend, as basically a brother. Meanwhile,

890
01:02:54,039 --> 01:02:57,639
Epstein was driving a wedge between Wexner and the executives

891
01:02:57,639 --> 01:03:02,199
at the Limited. Executives didn't stand why Wexner, a brutal

892
01:03:02,320 --> 01:03:07,239
boss and famous control freak, allowed Epstein such latitude. Less

893
01:03:07,239 --> 01:03:10,760
berated people. I once saw Less smack an executive on

894
01:03:10,840 --> 01:03:14,119
top of the head. A former victorious secret executive said

895
01:03:14,679 --> 01:03:18,559
Less could be a complete asshole. Recalled another former executive.

896
01:03:19,159 --> 01:03:22,599
His favorite thing was to yell, you have shit for brains.

897
01:03:23,400 --> 01:03:27,480
But with Epstein he took a more sympathetic stance. Less

898
01:03:27,480 --> 01:03:30,920
would defer to him in any meeting. Less would put

899
01:03:30,960 --> 01:03:34,880
his hand on Epstein's shoulder. So they had like this

900
01:03:35,840 --> 01:03:41,960
father's son, creepy type of you know, Jamie Lanister, Circe

901
01:03:42,119 --> 01:03:45,960
Lanister type of relationship. Right, and again it goes back

902
01:03:46,000 --> 01:03:51,000
to the rumors and the whispers about them perhaps being

903
01:03:51,079 --> 01:03:54,960
involved romantically. And it's certainly something that I give some

904
01:03:55,079 --> 01:03:59,039
weight to. Definitely don't put it out of the realm

905
01:03:59,039 --> 01:04:06,800
of possibility. Epstein often invoked Wesner's authority to make employees

906
01:04:06,840 --> 01:04:10,239
feel as if they work for him. Epstein would call

907
01:04:10,280 --> 01:04:12,719
you and wouldn't give his name. He'd just start talking

908
01:04:12,760 --> 01:04:15,159
and expect you to know who it was. A former

909
01:04:15,239 --> 01:04:18,639
senior executive said he was becoming more and more active

910
01:04:18,639 --> 01:04:22,480
in the business. It was really upsetting people. In nineteen

911
01:04:22,559 --> 01:04:25,440
ninety six, as the Limited was preparing to spin off

912
01:04:25,440 --> 01:04:28,719
Abercrombie and Fitch into a separate company on the New

913
01:04:28,800 --> 01:04:33,039
York Stock Exchange, Epstein flew to Columbus and told executives

914
01:04:33,280 --> 01:04:36,880
that he would decide the share price. Imagine that. Imagine

915
01:04:36,880 --> 01:04:39,360
you were one of the executives from the Limited and

916
01:04:39,519 --> 01:04:42,880
Jeffrey Epstein's bitch ass gets off the plane and starts

917
01:04:42,920 --> 01:04:46,880
hooting and hollering about he's making up share prices. I

918
01:04:46,920 --> 01:04:49,480
don't know how one of these executives didn't just haul

919
01:04:49,559 --> 01:04:53,960
off and crack them one. Oh you are are you well? First,

920
01:04:54,000 --> 01:04:56,519
you're going to the dentist, and I suggest you bring

921
01:04:56,559 --> 01:04:58,559
all of these teeth that I'm about to knock out

922
01:04:58,599 --> 01:04:59,760
with you so you can get them.

923
01:04:59,760 --> 01:05:00,760
Speaker 2: Put your head.

924
01:05:01,880 --> 01:05:05,079
Speaker 1: You're making the share price while lo angol, you're making

925
01:05:05,119 --> 01:05:05,840
the share price.

926
01:05:06,199 --> 01:05:07,119
Speaker 2: That would be my answer.

927
01:05:07,159 --> 01:05:15,079
Speaker 1: Anyway. Executives worried Epstein was committing insider trading because days earlier,

928
01:05:15,440 --> 01:05:19,719
someone they assumed Epstein had sold an unusually large chunk

929
01:05:19,719 --> 01:05:23,000
of Limited stock. There was so much concern that One

930
01:05:23,000 --> 01:05:26,119
of the lawyers looked around the room and said, are

931
01:05:26,360 --> 01:05:27,920
we going to have to go to jail for this?

932
01:05:28,400 --> 01:05:31,719
We're called an executive who attended the meeting. According to

933
01:05:31,760 --> 01:05:35,760
the executive, Epstein got his way. So that's the kind

934
01:05:35,800 --> 01:05:38,840
of power this scumbag was wielding their folks. I want

935
01:05:38,880 --> 01:05:42,320
to drive that point home. Epstein was such a powerful

936
01:05:42,400 --> 01:05:46,079
figure in Wexner's life that he could get away with

937
01:05:46,159 --> 01:05:50,039
shit like this, basically insider trading. And he probably was

938
01:05:50,320 --> 01:05:52,880
involved in some insider trading here. Do I have the

939
01:05:52,920 --> 01:05:57,800
evidence for that? No, but Ockham's razor, and all right,

940
01:05:58,079 --> 01:06:00,760
we know that this guy was up to his forehead

941
01:06:00,920 --> 01:06:04,639
and insider trading, working on the Gratz hustle, you name it.

942
01:06:07,559 --> 01:06:11,800
The Limited's vice chairman, Tom Hopkins, told Wexner that Epstein

943
01:06:11,880 --> 01:06:15,199
was a con man. Sources said Wexner brushed aside the

944
01:06:15,239 --> 01:06:18,840
complaints less thought he knew more than the people around him.

945
01:06:19,000 --> 01:06:22,880
A former executive said, yeah, guess not. How's that working

946
01:06:22,920 --> 01:06:27,599
out for you now? Oh? Less you know, the saying

947
01:06:29,239 --> 01:06:32,079
you should dance with the girl that you brought. Well,

948
01:06:32,159 --> 01:06:35,239
Wexner forgot all about that. He abandoned the people that

949
01:06:35,320 --> 01:06:39,679
helped make him successful. He abandoned the people who helped

950
01:06:39,679 --> 01:06:46,519
make l brand successful and instead started riding shotgun with

951
01:06:46,639 --> 01:06:53,719
Jeffrey Epstein instead, Merritt said, Beginning in the early aughts,

952
01:06:53,880 --> 01:06:57,480
Epstein spent less and less time in Ohio, but publicly

953
01:06:57,519 --> 01:07:00,559
Wexner still had glowing things to say about his money manager.

954
01:07:01,199 --> 01:07:04,360
In two thousand and three, Wesner told a journalist that

955
01:07:04,400 --> 01:07:11,079
Epstein had excellent judgment and unusually high standards, adding he

956
01:07:11,239 --> 01:07:15,360
was always the most loyal friend. So, according to Wexner,

957
01:07:17,000 --> 01:07:22,000
Epstein had excellent judgment and unusually high standards. High standards

958
01:07:22,320 --> 01:07:31,639
for who exactly, high standards for Djankis Khan. Again, it

959
01:07:31,800 --> 01:07:35,280
just goes to show you that all the bs Les

960
01:07:35,320 --> 01:07:40,000
Wexner wants to pitch about how Epstein deceived him and

961
01:07:40,079 --> 01:07:42,360
stole from him and all of that stuff, I don't

962
01:07:42,400 --> 01:07:48,000
buy it for a second. It's all straight garbage, straight trash,

963
01:07:48,039 --> 01:07:51,079
and every single thing that they talk about when it

964
01:07:51,119 --> 01:07:55,559
comes to the relationship between Les Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein

965
01:07:55,920 --> 01:08:02,159
needs to be examined. On the face of it, these

966
01:08:02,159 --> 01:08:06,559
two men were vastly different in temperament. Epstein was about

967
01:08:06,599 --> 01:08:10,760
flamboyant and not private at all. About his sexual appetites,

968
01:08:11,519 --> 01:08:14,280
even if most everyone was unaware of the age of

969
01:08:14,280 --> 01:08:18,239
his survivors. Oh yeah, okay, sure. Epstein filled his house

970
01:08:18,239 --> 01:08:21,880
with erotic art and displayed a copy of Nabakhov's Lolita

971
01:08:22,199 --> 01:08:25,079
and a book by the Marquise de Sad on his desk.

972
01:08:25,800 --> 01:08:28,960
Sounds like a fantastically well adjusted guy, right, because that's

973
01:08:28,960 --> 01:08:31,159
the kind of thing that's on everyone's desk when you

974
01:08:31,199 --> 01:08:38,399
walk into their house. Wexner was a preshy billionaire who

975
01:08:38,439 --> 01:08:41,840
literally built his own fiefdom in the middle of an

976
01:08:41,840 --> 01:08:45,880
American rust belt. It's hard to ultimately define their dealings,

977
01:08:46,119 --> 01:08:49,439
but I am certain that the vast sums Epstein earned

978
01:08:49,479 --> 01:08:53,119
from Wexner were the source of his power. One of

979
01:08:53,119 --> 01:08:56,439
the tragic ironies of this story is that Wexner's teenage

980
01:08:56,479 --> 01:09:00,000
customer base was made up of the kinds of girls

981
01:09:00,079 --> 01:09:04,720
that Epstein preyed upon. Epstein used the money and legitimacy

982
01:09:04,760 --> 01:09:08,319
has worked for Wexner and others afforded him to bring

983
01:09:08,359 --> 01:09:14,680
about unspeakable human suffering. Fair enough, he sure did. He

984
01:09:14,720 --> 01:09:21,479
most certainly did, and the disgustingness of it. The whole

985
01:09:22,079 --> 01:09:25,840
young girls and the pink brand that victorious secret and

986
01:09:26,039 --> 01:09:28,479
all of it when you look at it through this scope,

987
01:09:28,840 --> 01:09:33,600
is so disturbing that it is it almost takes your

988
01:09:33,640 --> 01:09:36,560
breath away, honestly, with how disturbing the whole entire thing

989
01:09:36,680 --> 01:09:42,479
is when you look at it all as one. Since

990
01:09:42,520 --> 01:09:47,119
Epstein's death in August twenty nineteen, Wexner's professional life has

991
01:09:47,159 --> 01:09:50,439
been in a tailspin. The board of L Brands, the

992
01:09:50,520 --> 01:09:55,119
Limited was renamed in twenty thirteen, hired Davis Polk to

993
01:09:55,239 --> 01:10:00,239
conduct an investigation into Wexner's relationship with Epstein. The investigation

994
01:10:00,399 --> 01:10:03,840
was never made public, but months later Wexner stepped down

995
01:10:03,880 --> 01:10:07,159
as CEO, ending his run as the longest serving chief

996
01:10:07,159 --> 01:10:11,039
executive in the S and P. Five hundred. He remained

997
01:10:11,119 --> 01:10:19,000
chairman of the board. So that investigation whatever right Again,

998
01:10:19,239 --> 01:10:22,439
anytime they have one of these so called independent investigations,

999
01:10:22,520 --> 01:10:26,520
I roll my eyes. You want to be impactful, you

1000
01:10:26,560 --> 01:10:29,399
want to do the right thing, Go and speak to

1001
01:10:29,479 --> 01:10:33,159
the FBI, willingly, go under oath and talk to them

1002
01:10:33,199 --> 01:10:35,960
about all the things you saw well you were around

1003
01:10:36,079 --> 01:10:41,079
Jeffrey Epstein. Short of that, it's all bs. In my opinion,

1004
01:10:46,760 --> 01:10:51,079
Wexner's problems only deepened. Shareholders sued L Brands, alleging the

1005
01:10:51,159 --> 01:10:55,520
Davis Polk investigation was a whitewash. L Brands retained the

1006
01:10:55,600 --> 01:10:59,279
law firm walked Ol Lipton to conduct a second investigation

1007
01:10:59,720 --> 01:11:04,520
into Wexner and Epstein's dealings. This past May, Wexner stepped

1008
01:11:04,560 --> 01:11:07,840
down from the L Brands board, ending his last official

1009
01:11:07,920 --> 01:11:10,640
role in the company he founded more than a half

1010
01:11:10,720 --> 01:11:16,039
century ago. So we know that he's still, you know,

1011
01:11:16,520 --> 01:11:19,600
friendly with people on that board. We know that he

1012
01:11:19,720 --> 01:11:22,880
still has some sympathy on that board. But at least

1013
01:11:22,920 --> 01:11:26,920
he had to suffer stepping down, right. I know it's

1014
01:11:26,920 --> 01:11:31,039
a small victory, but at least it's showing some progress

1015
01:11:31,279 --> 01:11:33,600
that there's going to be some sort of penalty for

1016
01:11:33,640 --> 01:11:36,880
these people, because, like I said earlier, I am not

1017
01:11:37,039 --> 01:11:40,600
too confident in people like Wexter getting charged by the

1018
01:11:40,640 --> 01:11:43,960
government or anything like that. All right now, I'd love

1019
01:11:44,000 --> 01:11:46,039
to be wrong, and I'd love to see the government

1020
01:11:46,119 --> 01:11:52,159
go hard, but their track record is not great. Meanwhile,

1021
01:11:52,560 --> 01:11:55,439
Dershowitz has subpoenaed Wexner to testify as part of his

1022
01:11:55,520 --> 01:12:00,399
defamation lawsuit against Virginia Roberts, who alleged Epstein effect her

1023
01:12:00,479 --> 01:12:07,239
to Dershowitz. Dershowitz denies Robert's allegations. L Brand shareholders are

1024
01:12:07,279 --> 01:12:11,000
suing board members, including the Wexners, in a Delaware court,

1025
01:12:11,479 --> 01:12:17,279
accusing Abigail Wexner of not doing enough while Epstein and

1026
01:12:17,640 --> 01:12:22,439
Gilain Maxwell sexually assaulted Maria Farmer in the New Albany compound.

1027
01:12:22,680 --> 01:12:26,960
Now imagine that shareholders are suing board members over what

1028
01:12:27,119 --> 01:12:30,439
happened to Maria. That's putting a stamp on Maria's story.

1029
01:12:30,520 --> 01:12:30,920
Speaker 2: Huh.

1030
01:12:31,039 --> 01:12:36,159
Speaker 1: The shareholders believer her, Obviously their lawyer's believer. Obviously, It's

1031
01:12:36,199 --> 01:12:45,119
too bad the FBI didn't. The Wexners have declined to comment,

1032
01:12:45,319 --> 01:12:49,680
citing pending litigation. Maxwell's sex trafficking trial is scheduled for

1033
01:12:49,720 --> 01:12:53,520
the fall. She has pleaded not guilty. Wexner's name is

1034
01:12:53,560 --> 01:12:57,199
bound to be discussed during testimony. Those who have known

1035
01:12:57,239 --> 01:13:01,520
Wexner longest have experience the range of emotions as they've

1036
01:13:01,560 --> 01:13:04,960
watched his fall. It's not the less I knew, and no,

1037
01:13:05,399 --> 01:13:09,680
former Columbus Mayor Greg Les Shutge told me Harold Levin,

1038
01:13:09,880 --> 01:13:13,680
the former financial advisor who feuded with Epstein, feels a

1039
01:13:13,720 --> 01:13:18,159
small measure of vindication. When Epstein was arrested, my ex

1040
01:13:18,239 --> 01:13:21,399
wife called me and said you were right, he told me.

1041
01:13:22,800 --> 01:13:26,479
Wesner's childhood friend, Peter Holliday thought that the full extent

1042
01:13:26,560 --> 01:13:30,319
of what Epstein's trail of destruction has yet to be told.

1043
01:13:30,960 --> 01:13:33,399
I know the story isn't finished, he said. When the

1044
01:13:33,439 --> 01:13:38,319
whole story does come out, I just hope Less is dead. Wow.

1045
01:13:38,760 --> 01:13:44,279
That's powerful stuff from his buddy Peter Holliday, powerful stuff

1046
01:13:44,319 --> 01:13:49,520
about Les Wexner and an indictment in my opinion, on

1047
01:13:49,680 --> 01:13:59,680
him and his long long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Folks,

1048
01:14:00,119 --> 01:14:07,159
that concludes the Vanity Fair article detailing the relationship between

1049
01:14:07,239 --> 01:14:12,199
Jeffrey Epstein and Les Wexner. If you'd like to contact me,

1050
01:14:12,239 --> 01:14:15,800
you can do that at Bobby Kapuchi at ProtonMail dot com.

1051
01:14:16,079 --> 01:14:18,960
That's b O B B Y c A p u

1052
01:14:19,079 --> 01:14:23,000
C c I at ProtonMail dot com. You can also

1053
01:14:23,119 --> 01:14:25,920
find me on Twitter at b O B B Y

1054
01:14:26,319 --> 01:14:30,560
Underscore C A p u Cci. All of the links

1055
01:14:30,560 --> 01:14:33,000
that go with this episode can be found in the

1056
01:14:33,079 --> 01:14:37,439
description box. All right, folks, I'll be back later and

1057
01:14:37,560 --> 01:14:41,479
we will pick up where we left off. Have a

1058
01:14:41,520 --> 01:14:42,279
great day, everyone,