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--:-- Shamita Basu: Welcome to In Conversation from Apple News Today. I'm Shamita Basu.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: I'm Gabe Sherman, a special correspondent for Vanity Fair.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Every weekend, we talk to the people behind the best stories on Apple News+. Before Jeffrey Epstein was exposed for his crimes, he portrayed himself as a high-rolling New York financier. He owned a private jet, a massive townhouse in Manhattan, an island in the Caribbean. When he died, Epstein was worth about half a billion dollars. To me, the untold story of the whole Epstein scandal is where did his money come from?
--:-- Gabe Sherman: That's right. And I recently investigated this question for Vanity Fair. Without the money, he would not have been able to abuse the teenagers on the scale that he did. The money allowed him to buy access to people. It facilitated all the payments he made to underage girls.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Sherman connected the dots back to billionaire Leslie Wexner. Wexner is the founder of Elle Brands. That's the company that owns Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works. Wexner was also, until recently, the only publicly known client of Jeffrey Epstein. And according to Sherman's reporting, Wexner and Epstein developed a close relationship, one that baffled outsiders and shuffled a lot of Wexner's wealth into Epstein's hands.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: It's the old, you know, Woodward and Bernstein cliche, follow the money, and Wexner's money was at the root of what Epstein was able to do. Sherman's article in Vanity Fair is called The Mogul and the Monster, inside Jeffrey Epstein's decades-long relationship with his biggest client.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can read and listen to it on Apple News with an Apple News Plus subscription. Yeah, so tell us, when did he meet Epstein and how did they start working together?
--:-- Gabe Sherman: By all accounts, Wexner and Epstein met in the mid-1980s. The best I could tell from my interviews was 1986. They were introduced by the insurance executive, Robert Meister, who did business with Wexner's company, was very well plugged in in New York, and Epstein had cultivated a relationship with Robert Meister.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Epstein at the time was in his early 30s, was really just starting out trying to build his own investment business after he had been fired from Bear Stearns, was struggling. Basically, it was down and out. And through Meister, he had a lot of doors opened. And the biggest door, of course, was the entree into Leslie Wexner's world.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And Meister arranged a meeting for Epstein to pitch some business ideas to Wexner. And Wexner agreed to see Epstein at his house in Aspen, Colorado. And Epstein flew out there and had spun this kind of, now in hindsight, this ridiculous yarn that Wexner's then current money manager and his then lawyer had been fleecing him.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Epstein had presented himself as a, quote, financial bounty hunter. This was one of the cons that he had done over the years. He said that he had these kind of unique abilities to track down lost funds and could find the money and return it to its owner.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And this spiel must have impressed Wexner because shortly thereafter, he had hired Epstein not only to look for this, quote, lost money, but to actually manage all of his money.
--:-- Shamita Basu: What does it mean to be a money manager to someone extremely wealthy like Leslie Wexner?
--:-- Gabe Sherman: Well, there's two things. There's what does it mean to be a money manager in the normal world? And then there's what does it mean to be the money manager to Leslie Wexner the way that Epstein was?
--:-- Shamita Basu: In a general sense, what financial advisors do to the rich and powerful is that they basically are the steward of the billionaire's money so that the billionaire doesn't have to think about it.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: So they have the power to invest in hedge funds and real estate. In Epstein's case, not only did he do some of that, but he essentially became Wexner's almost rent-a-friend. He traveled the world with him. He advised him on how to have dinner parties and how to buy art. He almost became his 24-7 valet, concierge, aide-de-camp, you name it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He had a variety of different roles. And over the years, the role even evolved into being a fixer to make Wexner's unpleasant problems go away.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And so it was this ability to sort of shapeshift, and Epstein filled this void in Wexner's life that far exceeded what a normal financial advisor does.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So how did their relationship evolve, both on a personal level, but also professionally?
--:-- Gabe Sherman: What's so fascinating about that is that the relationship essentially was cemented almost immediately. I mean, Epstein was hired in 1989 to be Wexner's financial advisor. And by 1991, he had been granted general power of attorney over all of Wexner's financial life.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And by the late 1990s, he was living in the townhouse on East 71st Street that Wexner had owned in New York City that became the infamous Epstein residence where young women were lured to...
--:-- Gabe Sherman: That said I think once Epstein was arrested in Palm Beach in 2007 and got his sweetheart deal where he only had to serve 18 months in a county jail, I think the public press around that forced Wexner to cut ties.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And he did, by all accounts, sever ties with Epstein in 2007.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: What I found kind of chilling and also revealing about the intensity of their relationship was that Alan Dershowitz recalled that as he was preparing Epstein's defense in 2007 to try to keep him out of jail and keep the federal prosecutors from prosecuting him, Dershowitz worried that some of Epstein's closest confidants would flip and testify against him.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so Dershowitz asked Epstein, you know, Les Wexner knows everything about you. Are you worried that he might cooperate with the prosecutors?
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And Epstein said, again, according to Dershowitz, no, he'll never talk against me.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so Epstein's confidence that even under legal pressure, Wexner would remain loyal, I think is again a sign that this relationship was far beyond clients and investment professional.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: I mean, there was such a personal connection between these two men that Epstein was even confident that Wexner would never cross him.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think it's easy to wrap our minds around what Epstein got out of the relationship, but what could you determine about what Wexner was getting out of the relationship?
--:-- Gabe Sherman: The simplest explanation is that Leslie Wexner, even though he had everything in the world, was a very lonely man by all accounts. He was a Midwesterner. He felt out of place.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He was a shy, socially awkward young man. And so he didn't fit in in high school. I had interviewed one of his high school classmates who talked about how Wexner was kind of the odd man out.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And so this was a guy who really felt that he hadn't had, was not part of the cool kids club. And on top of that, he had a domineering mother who worked at his companies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Bella Wexner, Leslie Wexner's mother, was a corporate secretary of the limited. And she, even though he was the CEO, in many meetings struck the executives as the real boss, and she would, you know, openly contradict him.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And so I think Epstein recognized that Wexner wanted to be his own man and in his own strange way gave him the confidence to be his own man.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Can you talk a little bit about, there was one incident mentioned there about how Epstein was apparently talking about how he is a Victoria's Secret recruiter and how he sort of used his relationship with Wexner and Victoria's Secret in that way.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: Yeah. So in the 1990s, prior to setting up his sex trafficking ring in Palm Beach, Florida, Epstein used his relationship with Wexner to present himself to young women as a model scout.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so there are numerous examples of Epstein luring women into sexual situations, promising them that he could put them in the Victoria's Secret catalog.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And we also know that the executives at Victoria's Secret had become aware of Epstein's charade. Cindy Fields, who at the time in the 1990s ran the Victoria's Secret catalog, I reported that one of her junior executives came to her and said that a model in New York had complained at a photo shoot that some creepy guy named Jeffrey Epstein was lying to girls in New York and saying he was a model scout.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Cindy Fields was, of course, horrified by this and told the junior executives to report it up to Wexner. And by all accounts, Wexner was made aware of Epstein's lies and said that he would put a stop to it.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: But he may have told Epstein to stop, but Epstein didn't stop. And so, you know, this is another instance in which Epstein's relationship with Wexner enabled him to abuse young women in a way that he would not have been able to without it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I think one of the reasons I really wanted to do this story is I feel that Wexner has really escaped a lot of public accountability for enabling Epstein crimes either wittingly or unwittingly Wexner has maintained throughout that he had no knowledge of Epstein behavior
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And if that's true, it still doesn't absolve him from the fact that it was his money that created so much suffering.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Wexner has refused to speak on the record, not only to me, but really in any form about his relationship with Epstein. So I feel like he still has a lot of questions to answer for his role in this terrible tragedy.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: So that's part of the motivation, again, why I thought he was such an important subject to investigate.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And especially because in one incident that you write about, and that has been reported on before, you talk about a woman, Maria Farmer, who Epstein invited to Wexner's estate in Ohio.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: Yes, of course. So I just want to give some context because the story that Maria Farmer tells is a deeply chilling one.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So in the late 1980s, Leslie Wexner started buying up farmland all around Columbus, Ohio. And it was his dream that he would actually build his own town from scratch that would be modeled on a English countryside village.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And being the billionaire that he is, he achieved that dream. And by the mid-1990s, Wexner had created a town called New Albany, Ohio. That was where he built a 60,000 square foot estate that was like a English country manor.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And all around New Albany, there were red brick mansions that had been built that Wexner had sold as part of this real estate development.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And so fast forward to 1996 and Maria Farmer, who was then a struggling art student in New York, was working part-time as an assistant at Epstein's townhouse.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And she saw a lot of disturbing things, young girls coming and going, powerful men, mysterious men coming to meet Epstein. And she just was not happy in this job and wanted to quit.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And as she tells it, she quit, told Epstein this, she was done, and he was so desperate to keep her. He quickly said, listen, I talked to my boss, Leslie Wexner, and he wants you to move out to Ohio where you can work on this project that she was working on.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so grudgingly, she accepts this offer and she drives out to Ohio where she was going to live at Epstein's mansion that he had built next to Wexner's estate.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And she gets there and immediately feels that she's living in some sort of, you know, sounds like that movie Get Out because, you know, there's security guards patrolling the property.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She feels like she can't leave. She feels that she's being watched by cameras all the time.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And ultimately, it builds to this moment when Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell travel to Ohio and end up sexually assaulting Maria Farmer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And as Maria tells it, she tried to report it to the local police. The local police said that they work for Wexner. They weren't going to come to her aid.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And she had to call her father, who lived in Kentucky at the time. And he drove overnight and essentially rescued her.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so I think what this story is emblematic of is the fact that Epstein's abuse was taking place literally at Les Wexner's doorstep.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And so, again, his world is directly linked to some of Epstein's worst abuses.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I know that you spent years researching and writing about Roger Ailes, Fox News CEO, another powerful person who was accused of sexual harassment by women going back decades.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: What interests you about these subjects who become very powerful, very wealthy, and then use that power to behave badly or enable others to behave badly?
--:-- Shamita Basu: The short answer is I don't like bullies.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: I never have someone who had been bullied himself in schools as a child.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think when you have asymmetrical power imbalances in our culture, and we live now in a time of extreme income inequality, which just makes this even more of an issue, it leads to some really bad things.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And I think men, especially men who become very rich and create their own worlds, and I think there's a lot of similarities between Wexner and Roger Ailes because both men essentially created worlds in which their word was gospel.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know, Les Wexner literally built his own town. And whereas Roger Ailes, you know, built Fox News and bought the local newspaper in his small town where he was essentially ran the place.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: It leads to people feeling like they are untouchable.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so while there are differences, those were the similarities in the story.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And I think it just motivates me more to try to just do more digging and more researching so that the truth can come out, because it's a cliche at this point in journalism, but sunlight and transparency is the only way it leads to change.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You've talked about how when you were writing about Roger Ailes, he hired investigators to dig up dirt on you in a very concerted way.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: I've been wondering have you been targeted in any similar ways since researching Wexner or Epstein?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Not that I know of in terms of the PIs although I mean it a very common thing, unfortunately, for billionaires and very rich people to use PIs to harass journalists.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: That said, Wexner did hire very high-powered lawyers to threaten me and Vanity Fair and send you know, letters.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so there was a lot of legal pressure on me and the magazine not to publish this story.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And I'm grateful for my editors who stood firm behind me.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And, you know, this is a case where, you know, money enables powerful men like Wexner to use lawyers to try to intimidate journalists into not writing about them.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And so, you know, clearly this, he was acting like this was a story he did not want told.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that just confirmed in my mind, it made me all the more determined to tell it.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: Now, your work on Ailes was happening under very different circumstances while Ailes was still in power at Fox News.
--:-- Shamita Basu: What has it been like for you researching and writing about a person like Epstein, who is not alive, no longer actively holding that power, and also Wexner?
--:-- Gabe Sherman: So it presents some challenges for sure. You know, Epstein was a world-famous pathological liar.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so oftentimes he would tell people things. And because he's dead, there is only his version, you know, what he told people.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: There's really no way in some sense to go and ask him or challenge his version of events.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the case of Wexner, a lot of his power has actually diminished.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And I think part of the reason I was able to tell the story now is that he has been pushed aside from the retail empire he built.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know, there has been pressure on him building ever since the Epstein scandal broke in 2019.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: He's stepped down as chairman of the board of L Brands, which was the parent company that the Limited became.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so I think the fact that Wexner is no longer actively the CEO of this empire freed up people to finally begin to talk about what they saw over the years.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: Wexner has sort of referred to himself as a victim of Epstein. Soon after Epstein's death, he said that he was taken advantage of, that he was embarrassed about the relationship he had with Epstein.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Do you see Wexner as a victim?
--:-- Gabe Sherman: That's ridiculous. I mean, this is one of the most savvy and ruthless and powerful and sophisticated corporate executives in American history.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I mean, Leslie Wexner was the longest serving CEO in the S&P 500, I think, in American history.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: If not, he was one of the longest serving.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the idea that he was some hapless victim who was taken advantage of by Epstein, who, yes, by all accounts, was a cunning con artist, is still absurd on its face.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: I mean, for example, Jerry Merritt, who ran corporate security for The Limited, recalled that he once asked Wexner, why are you giving Epstein all of this stuff? You know, why are you being so generous?
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Wexner, according to Merritt, said, well, you know, I have more money than I could ever spend, so it doesn't matter.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: I mean, that to me doesn't sound like someone who is being taken advantage of.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That to me sounds like someone who is willingly turning over vast sums of money to Epstein.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And it's also somebody who gave Epstein general power of attorney over all of his financial matters, which means in simple terms that Epstein had the legal authority to do whatever he wanted with Les Wexner's money.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He could go to the bank, take out money with an ATM card. He could write a check. He could buy a house. He could do anything with Wexner's money that was legal.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: There was nothing wrong with that. And so if you're going to give your life savings over to somebody and say, go for it, do whatever you want, you're not being taken advantage of. You are making that decision.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Did any of the sources you spoke to for this reporting, the people who knew Wexner really well, did anyone talk about what they think accountability should look like for someone like him?
--:-- Gabe Sherman: I think what his friends and former colleagues worried about is that he will face consequences, and there will be accountability, and they worry about someone that they cared for and they worked with would have to go through that.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think one of the quotes in the piece that really will stick with me forever was something that a childhood friend of Wexner's told me who said, I'm sure we're not at the end of this story, and I hope that when the full story does come out that Les is dead.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: And I think what that quote is so evocative of is that when the full truth does come out, it's not going to look good for Wexner.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Gabe Sherman writing for Vanity Fair. Thank you so much for taking some time to talk to us.
--:-- Gabe Sherman: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Gabe Sherman's article is available now for Apple News Plus subscribers. iPhone users can subscribe in the Apple News app.
