Billionaire businessman Les Wexner told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday that he "never witnessed nor had any knowledge of Epstein's criminal activity," delivering a closed-door deposition under congressional subpoena at his home base in New Albany, Ohio.
Wexner, the Ohio-based founder of L Brands and a longtime Republican donor, also provided a written statement to the panel. In it, he described Jeffrey Epstein as a manipulator who exploited connections to build a false veneer of respectability.
"Over the course of many years, [Epstein] carefully used his acquaintance with important individuals to curate an aura of legitimacy that he then used to expand his network of acquaintances, and apparent credibility, even farther."
According to Politico, the testimony is part of the committee's broader investigation into Epstein and the Justice Department's handling of the case. Wexner has not been charged. DOJ materials listed him as a potential secondary co-conspirator, though the same memo noted there was "limited evidence regarding his involvement."
The contours of the Wexner-Epstein arrangement are by now well established in outline, if not in detail. Epstein initially offered to advise Wexner on his personal finances as a favor. Wexner eventually hired him in an official capacity and granted him power of attorney.
That is an extraordinary amount of trust to place in any single individual, let alone one whose actual financial credentials were always murky. Wexner said the arrangement soured in the 2000s, when it became clear Epstein had been stealing from his family. Epstein transferred some money back but never admitted wrongdoing.
Wexner told the committee he severed the relationship entirely.
"I completely and irrevocably cut ties with Epstein nearly twenty years ago when I learned that he was an abuser, a crook, and a liar."
A Wexner spokesperson, following the deposition, said Wexner "honestly answered every question put to him today by the Committee" and "reiterated that he has no knowledge of, and did not participate in, Epstein's illegal conduct."
House Democrats on the panel arrived with a clear thesis: Wexner bankrolled the machine that made Epstein's crimes possible. Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight panel, made that case bluntly to reporters.
"There is no single person that was more involved in providing Jeffrey Epstein with the financial support to commit his crimes than Les Wexner."
Garcia also claimed that Epstein's victims had expressed concern about money Wexner transferred to Epstein, putting the figure at "potentially over a billion dollars." That number is Garcia's characterization; no specific document or verified source was cited to support it.
Rep. Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts described "a deep trust between these two men" and "a deep friendship there." Lynch told reporters that throughout the deposition, Wexner claimed to know less and less about his relationship with Epstein as questioning continued.
That framing is worth noting. Lynch is characterizing closed-door testimony that the public has not yet seen. The committee said it would soon release a video and transcript of the interview, which will let the actual words do the talking.
Committee Chair James Comer was absent from the deposition. A spokesperson attributed his absence to previously scheduled oral surgery. The reporting does not explain why no other Republican members attended.
That absence matters. When only Democrats show up to question a witness in a high-profile investigation, the proceeding takes on a prosecutorial flavor with no cross-examination. Whatever emerged from that room on Wednesday was shaped entirely by one side's line of questioning. Republicans who want the Epstein investigation to produce real accountability, and not just partisan theater, need to be in the room when the questions are being asked.
This is not a story that belongs to one party. The Epstein saga implicates powerful people across the political spectrum. The American public has waited years for genuine transparency about who enabled Epstein, who looked the other way, and why the Justice Department's handling of the case has inspired so little confidence. Congressional oversight is the mechanism for those answers. It only works when both sides participate.
Wexner's testimony adds a data point, but it does not close any loops. The core questions remain:
Wexner says he was deceived by a skilled con man. That is entirely plausible. Epstein's entire operation depended on cultivating exactly that kind of trust with exactly that kind of person. But "I was fooled" is an explanation, not an exoneration, and the gap between granting someone power of attorney over your fortune and having no inkling of their criminal life is a gap that invites scrutiny.
The transcript, when it drops, will reveal whether the committee's questions were sharp enough to close that gap or whether Wednesday was mostly theater. Until then, the public is left with dueling characterizations from a billionaire who says he knew nothing and Democrats who say he funded everything.
Somewhere between those two claims sit the victims, still waiting for the full truth about the system that failed them.