Les Wexner is the Ohio billionaire retail magnate, owner of the Limited and Victoria’s Secret and, per Kiriakou, the richest man in Ohio.[1] John Kiriakou raises Wexner when asking where Jeffrey Epstein’s money came from, citing Vanity Fair allegations that the two were in some sort of relationship and that Wexner gave Epstein “millions and millions of dollars” to be his tax advisor — a characterization Kiriakou notes Wexner and his wife both deny.[2] Kiriakou notes the incongruity that Epstein, who had never graduated college and was substitute-teaching seventh-grade math, was hired by a multi-billionaire specifically as a tax advisor.[1] Kiriakou offers the unexplained money as part of his case that Epstein was working for the Israelis.[3] He has separately stated his personal belief, without proof, that Wexner and Epstein had a sexual relationship, and that Wexner seeded Epstein’s career with roughly $100 million.[4]
The question he would ask
Asked what he would put to Wexner first if he had him under oath, Kiriakou frames the hiring as the whole case in one sentence: “What would possess you to hire a seventh grade substitute math teacher who had never finished college to be tax advisor when you are the richest man in the state of Ohio? There wasn’t one person in the entire United States of America for you to hire… unless you were also having sex with him.”[5][6] He notes the allegation is one Wexner has consistently denied.[6]
He adds a piece of circumstance drawn from Vanity Fair: Wexner, well into adulthood and never married, married shortly after people began publicly asking whether he was gay — “as soon as people started asking that question, he ran out and got married.”[7] His other questions would concern the island: he says he would want a full accounting of every visit, and does not believe Wexner’s on-the-record claim to have gone only once, by boat, with his family — “not if you’ve been not just a friend, but a close friend, a best friend for more than two decades.”[8][9] The reason the visits matter to him is the wiring: “literally every room, including the bathrooms, were wired for audio and video. Nobody does that.”[9]
Kiriakou also flags Wexner’s absence from the record as the scandal within the scandal: Wexner was listed as a co-conspirator in the documents and had never been interviewed by the FBI.[10]
The referral, and the congressional testimony
Kiriakou treats the Wexner relationship as the origin of Epstein’s wealth — “I won’t say the basis, but the origin” — and as the thing that requires explaining. Epstein was a junior high school substitute mathematics teacher with no college degree; Wexner, the wealthiest man in Ohio, attached himself to Epstein and, in Kiriakou’s phrase, “adopted so to speak” him, without any logical reason for doing so. “There had to be 500,000 people in the United States that would have been better qualified to manage this billionaire’s money. Why Jeffrey Epstein?”[11][12]
Kiriakou’s inference is that the Israelis directed Epstein to target Wexner, and that this is what got him started.[12] He also raises, while noting that Wexner adamantly denies it, the possibility that the two men were lovers.[13]
Wexner’s own explanation, given in congressional testimony, was that he had spoken to the Rothschilds and that they recommended Epstein as the man who managed their money. Kiriakou regards this as raising the question rather than answering it: “The guy was a seventh grade substitute math teacher with no college degree and he’s managing the Rothschild family’s billions. It doesn’t make any sense.”[14]
He describes the testimony as a further tease rather than a disclosure, and recounts a moment from it that circulated afterwards: a congressman asked a question, Wexner gave what appeared to be an honest answer, and on a hot microphone his lawyer leaned in and said “I will kill you if next time you don’t answer the question yes or no.”[15]