House Panel: Wexner gave Epstein ‘about a billion dollars’

NEW ALBANY, Ohio (WSYX) — Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., was among the House Oversight committee members who provided a briefing to the media on Wednesday, wasting no time getting into the details of what Columbus billionaire Les Wexner had allegedly shared during the first two hours of his deposition at his home in New Albany.

RECAP: Watch Wednesday’s briefing below:

Wexner is being questioned about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who died by suicide in 2019 after being convicted of sex trafficking underage girls in Florida and New York.

Wexner, the founder of L Brands and a global business tycoon, is mentioned repeatedly in the Epstein files.

MORE WEXNER COVERAGE

“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 told reporters Wednesday. “That is already, as we all know, in the public record. We’ve also directly heard from survivors about Mr. Wexner, about his involvement and their concerns as to the enormous amount of money that was essentially transferred over and paid to by Mr. Epstein.

“To be very clear, we know that approximately over a billion dollars, it looks like — it’s about a billion dollars — that was either transferred, provided in stocks, or given directly to Mr. Epstein by Wexner.”

Garcia then said Wexner claims he was unaware of how much money was going back and forth between him and Epstein.

“It’s important to note that Mr. Wexner appears to be unaware of much of the money, as he claims, that was given over to Mr. Epstein,” Garcia said. “In fact, it’s interesting that Mr. Wexner has already begun to clarify in his mind that somehow he and Mr. Epstein weren’t even friends. We should be very clear that the two were very close … .they spent a lot of time together. Mr. Wexner admitted that he traveled to both Epstein’s island as well as his other properties.”

Earlier Wednesday, Wexner, who has stayed largely out of the public eye in recent years, issued a three-page statement in which he called Epstein a “world-class con man” and said he cut ties with him nearly 20 years ago.

This story is being updated.