Les Wexner, the 88-year-old billionaire who built Victoria’s Secret into a retail empire, was deposed under subpoena on February 18, 2026, at his estate in New Albany, Ohio. The six-hour closed-door session before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee came just eight days after the Department of Justice unredacted his name from an FBI document that had labeled him one of eight co-conspirators in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Wexner told lawmakers he was “duped by a world-class con man” and insisted he had “done nothing wrong.” The FBI, it turns out, had tagged him as a co-conspirator back in August 2019 — five days after Epstein died in his Manhattan jail cell — but the label had been hidden from the public for nearly seven years.
The tension at the center of this story is straightforward: a man the FBI internally called a co-conspirator has never been charged with a crime, and his own attorneys say federal prosecutors told them in 2019 that Wexner was “neither a co-conspirator nor target in any respect.” That contradiction sat buried in classified files until Congress forced the issue. House Democrats walked away from the deposition saying they didn’t believe Wexner’s denials. Republicans who pushed for transparency got the name unredacted but have drawn no public conclusions of their own. What follows is a detailed account of the deposition, the financial relationship between Wexner and Epstein, the FBI’s internal deliberations, and what the congressional response tells us about where this investigation is headed.
Table of Contents
- Why Was Les Wexner Labeled an FBI Co-Conspirator in the Epstein Case?
- What Happened During the Six-Hour Deposition at Wexner’s Ohio Estate?
- The Billion-Dollar Financial Pipeline Between Wexner and Epstein
- The Power of Attorney and What It Actually Authorized
- The Contradiction Between the FBI Label and the DOJ’s Assurances
- The Democratic Pushback and What It Signals
- Where the Epstein Accountability Trail Goes From Here
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
Why Was Les Wexner Labeled an FBI Co-Conspirator in the Epstein Case?
On August 15, 2019 — five days after Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center — the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division compiled an internal document listing eight individuals as co-conspirators. The names included ghislaine Maxwell, Jean-Luc Brunel, Lesley Groff, Les Wexner, and four others whose identities remain redacted to this day. The document was not an indictment. It was not a charging decision. It was an internal investigative classification, the kind federal agents use to map out the orbit of a criminal enterprise. But its existence, once revealed, carried enormous weight. The DOJ initially released the document with Wexner’s name blacked out. It took a bipartisan effort — Reps.
Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, and Ro Khanna, a California Democrat — to argue that the redaction violated the Epstein Files Transparency Act. On February 10, 2026, the name was finally unredacted. Notably, a separate internal FBI email from the same period stated there was “limited evidence” regarding Wexner’s involvement in Epstein’s actual crimes. That qualifier matters. Being listed as a co-conspirator in an FBI working document is not the same as being named in a grand jury indictment. Maxwell was convicted. Brunel died in custody awaiting trial. Wexner has never been charged. The gap between an investigative label and a prosecutorial decision is wide, and Wexner’s case sits squarely in that gap.
What Happened During the Six-Hour Deposition at Wexner’s Ohio Estate?
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee deposed Wexner at his sprawling estate in New Albany, Ohio, on February 18, 2026. The session lasted approximately six hours and was conducted behind closed doors. Wexner, who appeared under subpoena, delivered a central narrative that he has maintained for years: he was conned. He called Epstein “diabolical” and told lawmakers, “I was naïve, foolish, and gullible to put any trust in Jeffrey Epstein… I have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide.” He said he “completely and irrevocably cut ties with Epstein nearly twenty years ago” after learning Epstein was “an abuser, a crook, and a liar.” However, if the goal of the deposition was to extract new information, Democrats on the committee said it fell short.
Rep. Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat, called Wexner’s claim that he didn’t have a close personal relationship with Epstein “bogus.” Democrats accused Wexner of downplaying his ties to Epstein and providing few new details during the session. The closed-door format meant no public cross-examination, no livestream, and no immediate transcript release. For those following the Epstein accountability trail, the deposition raised a familiar frustration: powerful people testify, deny, and walk away while the committee moves on to its next witness. Whether the transcript eventually sees daylight — and what it reveals beyond prepared talking points — remains an open question.
The Billion-Dollar Financial Pipeline Between Wexner and Epstein
The financial relationship between Les Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein is not a matter of speculation. It is documented, enormous, and central to understanding how Epstein accumulated the wealth and influence he used to insulate himself from accountability for decades. Wexner first met Epstein around 1986 through a business associate. By the early 1990s, Epstein was managing Wexner’s personal finances. In July 1991, Wexner granted Epstein full power of attorney — a legal instrument that gave Epstein the authority to make investments, execute business deals, and purchase property on Wexner’s behalf. Rep.
Garcia estimated during the committee proceedings that Wexner transferred more than $1 billion to Epstein in cash and stock holdings over the course of their relationship. That figure is staggering by any measure. It made Epstein’s claims of being a self-made financier to the ultra-wealthy look even more hollow — much of his fortune appears to have originated from a single client. In 2007, Wexner says he fired Epstein, revoked his power of attorney, and removed Epstein’s name from his bank accounts. Wexner’s attorneys told investigators in 2008 that Epstein had repaid him $100 million, believed to be only a portion of what Epstein had taken. The math is simple and damning: if over a billion went out and only a hundred million came back, the rest funded whatever Epstein was doing with it.
The Power of Attorney and What It Actually Authorized
Granting someone full power of attorney is not a casual business arrangement. It is one of the most expansive legal authorities one person can give another. When Wexner signed that document in July 1991, he effectively handed Epstein the keys to his financial life — the ability to buy and sell property, move money between accounts, enter contracts, and conduct business transactions, all in Wexner’s name and with Wexner’s money. For context, most people grant limited power of attorney for a specific transaction or a defined period. Full power of attorney with no apparent restrictions, given to someone who was not a licensed financial advisor at any major institution, is extraordinary. The tradeoff Wexner describes is one of convenience versus oversight.
He trusted Epstein to handle the complexity of managing a billionaire’s finances, and in exchange, he apparently did not scrutinize where the money went. That arrangement worked — at least from Wexner’s telling — until it didn’t. But the question congressional investigators are circling is whether “naïve and gullible” adequately explains more than a decade of financial entanglement with a man who was already drawing law enforcement attention. Wexner says he cut ties in 2007. Epstein’s first arrest in Florida was in 2006. The timeline raises the unavoidable question of what prompted the breakup and how much Wexner knew before the public did.
The Contradiction Between the FBI Label and the DOJ’s Assurances
The most legally significant tension in the Wexner story is the direct contradiction between what the FBI wrote internally and what the DOJ apparently told Wexner’s lawyers. The FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division listed Wexner as a co-conspirator in August 2019. According to Wexner’s attorneys, the Assistant U.S. Attorney told Wexner’s legal counsel that same year that he was “neither a co-conspirator nor target in any respect.” Both of these things cannot be fully true at the same time, and the public has no way to resolve the discrepancy without further disclosure. One important limitation to understand: an FBI investigative document and a prosecutorial determination are produced by different parts of the federal system with different standards.
FBI agents map networks and flag individuals of interest. Prosecutors decide whether the evidence meets the threshold for charges. It is possible — even common — for someone to appear in FBI case files as a co-conspirator without the DOJ ever intending to charge them. But the fact that the DOJ actively redacted Wexner’s name from the released document, and that it took a bipartisan congressional challenge under the Epstein Files Transparency Act to force disclosure, suggests someone in the system wanted that label to stay hidden. Whether that was to protect Wexner, to protect the investigation, or for some other reason entirely, we still do not know.
The Democratic Pushback and What It Signals
House Democrats emerged from the deposition openly skeptical. Rep. Garcia did not mince words, calling Wexner’s testimony into question and accusing him of providing a sanitized version of events.
The claim that Wexner had no close personal relationship with Epstein struck Democrats as particularly implausible given the power of attorney, the billion-dollar transfers, and the duration of their association. Garcia said the deposition raised “more questions than answers,” which in congressional parlance usually means the committee wants more witnesses, more documents, or both. The Democratic response matters because it signals that at least one faction of the committee is not satisfied with Wexner’s narrative and may push for further investigation. Whether that translates into subpoenas for additional witnesses, referrals, or public hearings depends on committee dynamics and political will — two things that have historically been unreliable when it comes to holding billionaires accountable.
Where the Epstein Accountability Trail Goes From Here
The Wexner deposition is one piece of a much larger puzzle that Congress, the courts, and the public have been trying to assemble since Epstein’s death in 2019. Four names on that FBI co-conspirator list remain redacted. The Epstein Files Transparency Act has forced some disclosures, but the pace has been slow and the resistance from the DOJ has been real. The broader question — whether anyone beyond Ghislaine Maxwell will face legal consequences for enabling Epstein’s operation — remains unanswered after nearly seven years. What the Wexner chapter makes clear is that the financial infrastructure of Epstein’s world was not self-generated.
It was built on the trust, money, and legal authority of people like Wexner, who now claim they were victims of a con. That may be partially true. But a con that lasts more than a decade, involves more than a billion dollars, and is formalized through full power of attorney is not the same as getting scammed by a stranger on the internet. The system that let Epstein operate is the same system that let Wexner walk out of his deposition and go back to his estate. Whether Congress has the appetite to push harder remains the only question that matters.
Conclusion
Les Wexner’s deposition and the unredacting of his name as an FBI-listed co-conspirator represent a significant moment in the long effort to understand who enabled Jeffrey Epstein. The facts are not in dispute: Wexner gave Epstein full power of attorney, transferred more than a billion dollars over their relationship, and did not sever ties until 2007 — after Epstein’s first arrest. The FBI internally labeled Wexner a co-conspirator. The DOJ hid that label for years. Wexner says he was conned. Democrats say they don’t believe him.
He has never been charged. For anyone following the Epstein case, the Wexner deposition is a reminder that transparency and accountability are not the same thing. Getting a name unredacted is progress. Getting honest testimony under oath is harder. Getting consequences for the people who funded and facilitated a predator’s operation may be hardest of all. The four redacted names on that FBI list remain unknown, and the full transcript of Wexner’s six-hour deposition has not been released. Until both of those things change, the public is left with partial answers and a growing file of contradictions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Has Les Wexner been charged with any crime related to Jeffrey Epstein?
No. Despite being listed as a co-conspirator in an internal FBI document from August 2019, Wexner has never been charged with any crime. His attorneys have stated that the Assistant U.S. Attorney told Wexner’s legal counsel in 2019 that he was “neither a co-conspirator nor target in any respect.”
What does it mean to be listed as an FBI “co-conspirator”?
An FBI co-conspirator designation in an internal investigative document is not the same as a criminal charge or indictment. It reflects the FBI’s assessment of individuals connected to a criminal investigation. It does not require the same evidentiary threshold as a formal charge and does not carry legal consequences on its own.
How much money did Wexner transfer to Epstein?
Rep. Robert Garcia estimated that Wexner transferred more than $1 billion to Epstein in cash and stock holdings over their relationship, which spanned from approximately 1986 to 2007. Wexner’s attorneys said in 2008 that Epstein had repaid $100 million, believed to be only a fraction of the total.
Why was Wexner’s name redacted in the first place?
The DOJ initially released the FBI co-conspirator document with Wexner’s name blacked out. Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna argued the redaction violated the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and the name was unredacted on February 10, 2026. The DOJ has not publicly explained its rationale for the original redaction.
Who else was listed as a co-conspirator on the FBI document?
The document listed eight people. The publicly known names are Les Wexner, Ghislaine Maxwell, Jean-Luc Brunel, and Lesley Groff. Four other names remain redacted as of early 2026.
Was the deposition transcript made public?
No. The February 18, 2026 deposition was conducted behind closed doors by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. As of this writing, the full transcript has not been publicly released.