Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious sex offender, was drafting a letter to Leslie Wexner, the billionaire retail tycoon who had once been his main financial benefactor. Years after their acrimonious split in 2007, Mr. Epstein was contemplating the rekindling of that relationship, and he apparently wanted to remind Mr. Wexner of what he said was their shared history.
“You and I had ‘gang stuff’ for over 15 years,” Mr. Epstein wrote in a draft of the letter, which was included in the millions of pages of Epstein-related documents that the Justice Department released last week. He noted that “I owe a great debt to you, as frankly you owe to me.” He added that he had “no intention of divulging any confidence of ours.”
It is not clear what Mr. Epstein was hinting at or whether he even sent the undated letter, which was addressed to “Les.” Mr. Wexner — the source of hundreds of millions of dollars of Mr. Epstein’s wealth — has not been charged with wrongdoing.
But the letter fit into a broad pattern in which Mr. Epstein toyed with the idea of telling his past, present and potential financial sponsors that he knew — and was keeping quiet about — their supposed secrets. The messages, written with stray punctuation and spelling errors, veered from menacing to sentimental.
There was the 2013 email that Mr. Epstein sent to himself about the billionaire Bill Gates. The email rattled off the “morally inappropriate” work supposedly done for Mr. Gates, including procuring antibiotics “to deal with consequences of sex with russian girls” and arranging “illicit trysts, with married women.” It is not clear whether the allegations are true, why Mr. Epstein drafted the email or whether it was ever sent to Mr. Gates.
There were the dozens of messages that Mr. Epstein sent to Leon Black, the private equity billionaire, badgering him for millions of dollars and, on at least one occasion, noting Mr. Epstein’s work structuring payments Mr. Black made to a woman who accused him of sexual assault. (Newly released documents show that Mr. Epstein recommended Mr. Black hire an investigator to track the woman’s movements and that he was receiving updates on other women to whom Mr. Black had made payments.)
Other times, Mr. Epstein reassured Mr. Black: “Of course re any non financial issues, I am always there for you and will continue to be the best friend I can be.”
Representatives for the men dismissed Mr. Epstein’s allegations and insinuations as lies. A spokesman for Mr. Wexner said that he never received the letter, and that it “appears to fit a pattern of untrue, outlandish, and delusional statements made by Epstein in desperate attempts to perpetuate his lies and justify his misconduct.” Mr. Gates’s representative called Mr. Epstein “a proven, disgruntled liar” and said that Mr. Gates “unequivocally denies any improper conduct related to Epstein.” And a spokesman for Mr. Black said: “Mr. Black retained Epstein for tax and estate planning. He never felt threatened or blackmailed by Epstein.” Mr. Black has denied assaulting any woman.
Since Mr. Epstein’s death in a Manhattan jail in 2019, one of the most enduring conspiracy theories has been that he was gathering dirt on his wealthy, powerful and famous acquaintances that he could use for blackmail or other purposes. No proof of that has emerged. But the recently unearthed missives to men like Mr. Wexner suggest that Mr. Epstein seemed to revel in claiming to know his friends’ secrets — and that he recognized how such secrets might empower him.
Indeed, Mr. Epstein appeared to be keeping notes on some of his contacts, according to scores of files contained in the newly released documents. The electronic notes are nearly indecipherable to an outsider. There are lists of prominent contacts, mixed with mundane to-do items and a scattering of partially written phrases like “34 girls,” “crazy blow job” and “complicit, friends, family faith. Risk reward.”
Other notes include what appear to be the building blocks of the letter Mr. Epstein drafted to Mr. Wexner, probably around 2014 or 2015.
In addition to the letter, the newly released files contain a memo, written by prosecutors in 2019, that sheds fresh light on how the relationship between the two men fell apart.
Starting in the late 1980s, Mr. Epstein was the primary financial adviser to Mr. Wexner, whose company controlled famed retailers including Victoria’s Secret and the Limited. Mr. Wexner gave Mr. Epstein virtually unfettered authority over his fortune. Over the next decade or so, Mr. Epstein amassed hundreds of millions of dollars, as well as a private plane, a palatial townhouse and a luxury estate in Ohio — all previously owned by Mr. Wexner or his companies.
In 2007, the relationship unraveled. State and federal prosecutors in Florida were investigating Mr. Epstein for sex crimes, and Mr. Epstein informed Mr. Wexner and his wife, Abigail, that he was “having legal problems,” according to a 2019 memo in which investigators summarized a meeting with Mr. Wexner’s lawyers. Those legal problems, Mr. Epstein told the Wexners, involved an “overly aggressive police chief and some sort of massage.”
Given that legal jeopardy, Mr. Epstein suggested that Ms. Wexner, a corporate lawyer, take over management of the family fortune.
As Ms. Wexner dug into the finances, the lawyers told prosecutors, she “discovered that Epstein had misappropriated a significant amount of the family’s funds.” Mr. Epstein “frequently bought property on behalf of the Wexners and then sold it to himself for a fraction of the cost,” the lawyers said.
The Wexners were wary of inviting “unnecessary public attention,” the memo said, so instead of reporting the theft to the authorities or bringing legal action against Mr. Epstein, they opted for a private settlement. In early 2008, Mr. Epstein returned $100 million to the Wexners, a detail that has not previously been reported.
Several years later, though, Mr. Epstein was apparently looking to get back in Mr. Wexner’s orbit at a time when Mr. Epstein was facing increasing litigation threats from victims of his sexual abuse.
Mr. Epstein began his draft letter to Mr. Wexner by saying he was “truly sorry to hear that you have been the target of an extortion attempt” by Virginia Giuffre, one of Mr. Epstein’s most outspoken victims. (Ms. Giuffre, who died by suicide last year, said in a deposition that she was trafficked to Mr. Wexner, among others. Her claim was not corroborated, and Mr. Wexner vehemently denied it on multiple occasions.) Mr. Epstein mentioned that he had approached Mr. Wexner’s lawyer to propose a meeting, but that he had been rebuffed.
He then reminded Mr. Wexner of what he said was their mutual indebtedness and his past protection of Mr. Wexner’s interests. As evidence, he recounted a meeting with Ms. Wexner, where she confronted Mr. Epstein and “made many unfair, aggressive and false accusations. None of which could have been fully answered without violating a confidence with you.”
Without explaining what he was referring to, Mr. Epstein continued. “You and I had ‘gang stuff’ for over 15 years,” he wrote. “A great deal of it, that she was unaware of. I had no intention of divulging any confidence of ours, no matter what the accusations she made.” He added: “Putting your interests first. I always told you I would never under any circumstances give it up, or put you in harms way, no matter who, what or when.”
Tom Davies, the spokesman for Mr. Wexner, said it “appears Epstein was furious that Mr. Wexner refused to meet with him.” He also said that “Mr. Wexner terminated Epstein and cut off all ties with him following Mr. Wexner’s discovery of Epstein’s theft and criminal conduct.”
The relationship between the two men has long been the subject of scrutiny by prosecutors and others.
In August 2007, about a year before Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to soliciting prostitution from a minor, investigators approached Mr. Wexner. One of his lawyers said then that he was “very advanced in age and has no interaction with his ‘money manager’,” according to handwritten notes released by the Justice Department. Mr. Wexner at the time was 69 and continued to run his business for more than a dozen years afterward.
Mr. Wexner attracted more notice in 2019 when Mr. Epstein was charged with sex trafficking. A newly released F.B.I. memo listed Mr. Wexner as one of Mr. Epstein’s possible co-conspirators, though it also noted that “there is limited evidence regarding his involvement.”
When Mr. Wexner’s lawyers met with the Justice Department in 2019, they explained Mr. Epstein’s alleged theft and said that Mr. Wexner was unaware of his former adviser’s “inappropriate or unlawful activity with young women.”
Marion Little, a lawyer for Mr. Wexner, told The Times in a statement that he was told by prosecutors that Mr. Wexner was not a target of the investigation.
As recently as last year, in a presentation that came to light in the release last week, the Justice Department included Mr. Wexner on a list of “prominent names” of interest in the Epstein investigation.
Steve Eder has been an investigative reporter for The Times for more than a decade.
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