On February 18, 2026, an 88-year-old billionaire sat in his Ohio home for a deposition that lasted nearly five hours.
He was answering questions under oath about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and the ~$190 million he paid the convicted sex offender over the course of their relationship. His name appeared over 200 times in the Epstein files released by the Department of Justice. He had been subpoenaed. He had no choice but to sit there.
If you don’t know his name, you know his companies. Victoria’s Secret. Bath & Body Works. Abercrombie & Fitch. The Limited. At his peak, Leslie Wexner controlled more retail square footage than almost any individual in America. He was one of the wealthiest men in the country for three decades running. Columbus, Ohio is essentially a company town he built.
Four and a half hours in, Wexner was talking too much. His own attorney, Michael Levy, leaned over and whispered what he thought was off-mic: “I’m going to fucking kill you if you answer another question with more than five words.” They both laughed. Levy had spent the previous several hours trying to keep Wexner’s answers short. It wasn’t working.
The deposition produced details that cut through the noise.
Wexner testified that when he met Epstein in the mid-1980s, Epstein came with a Bear Stearns pedigree and claimed to manage money for the Rothschild family. Epstein had presented himself as the financial adviser to Élie de Rothschild and the Rothschild family in France. That was how he got in the door.
He also called Epstein a “con man.” He denied any knowledge of sex crimes. When asked about Virginia Giuffre’s accusations against him, he said, “She must be confused. It never happened.” He said he had visited Epstein’s island once, for roughly an hour, while on a boat with his family.
The FBI’s own files, released by the DOJ, list Wexner as a co-conspirator in the Epstein case. He has not been charged with any crime.
The Mentor’s Network
Leslie Wexner didn’t build his empire alone. He was brought into an existing network by a man named Max Fisher.
Fisher was a Detroit industrialist with alleged ties to the Purple Gang, a Jewish organized crime syndicate that ran bootlegging operations during Prohibition. By the 1970s, Fisher had reinvented himself as a Republican power broker. He served as a diplomatic liaison for Israeli military aid and was on intimate terms with Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford. In 1975, he became chairman of United Brands, the company formerly known as United Fruit, with a documented CIA history that includes the 1954 Guatemala coup and providing freighters for the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Fisher treated Wexner like a son. A 1987 profile described their relationship in exactly those terms. And Fisher did what mentors in these circles do: he opened doors. Together with Alfred Taubman and Henry Ford II, Fisher brought Wexner into a constellation of coordinated business interests. They took control of the Irvine Ranch in Orange County in 1977, outbidding Mobil Oil. They acquired Sotheby’s auction house in 1983. Fortune magazine, in a 1990 profile, called Fisher the “nexus” of the “oldest boy’s network” in American business.
This is the world Wexner occupied before Jeffrey Epstein ever appeared. A world where organized crime histories, intelligence connections, and legitimate corporate power weren’t separate categories. They were the same network, connected through personal relationships that stretched back decades.
And in a 1985 profile, Wexner described himself in terms that are hard to forget. He identified with the concept of a “dybbuk,” a malicious possessing spirit in Jewish folklore. He said he had a dybbuk inside him that drove his relentless business ambition. The profile treated it as colorful eccentricity. In retrospect, it reads differently.
The Man Who Got Everything
In 1987, Jeffrey Epstein became Wexner’s financial advisor. The timing of what happened next at Wexner’s company deserves attention.
That same year, an attorney named Allan Tessler joined The Limited’s board. Tessler had spent the previous decade as counsel for Earl Brian’s ventures, companies linked to the PROMIS intelligence surveillance software that Brief #001 documented Robert Maxwell distributing to governments worldwide. Two men with intelligence-adjacent backgrounds arrived at Wexner’s company in the same year. One became the company’s financial gatekeeper. The other joined its board of directors. A curious coincidence.
What followed was an unprecedented transfer of wealth and power.
Wexner granted Epstein power of attorney. Not limited authority over a specific transaction. Broad, sweeping control over his finances, his properties, his legal affairs. Billionaires employ armies of lawyers, accountants, and wealth managers to protect their assets. Wexner handed the keys to a man whose financial background, to this day, no one has been able to independently verify.
The property transfers tell the story in numbers.
Through the entity Nine East 71st Street Corp., Wexner’s money purchased a Manhattan townhouse for $13.2 million. Epstein served as president of the purchasing entity. The property sits on the Upper East Side. It is one of the largest private residences in New York City. It was later transferred to Epstein for $0. Not a discounted price. Not a symbolic dollar. Zero.
The property was assessed at $77 million.
An additional $46 million in real estate and property in New Albany, Ohio, a community Wexner essentially built from the ground up, was also transferred to Epstein through the same power of attorney arrangement. When Wexner was later asked about these transfers, his explanations shifted. First it was an employment arrangement. Then it was a misunderstanding of the scope of the power of attorney. None of the explanations have held up under scrutiny.
In total, a man with no clear source of independent wealth received tens of millions of dollars in assets from a billionaire who has never provided a coherent, consistent public explanation for why.
The Supply Chain
Wexner’s retail empire wasn’t just stores. It was logistics. The Limited operated one of the largest private supply chains in the world, moving goods from overseas factories to American malls at a speed and scale that competitors couldn’t match. The hub of this operation was Rickenbacker Airport in Columbus, Ohio.
Two airlines established cargo operations at Rickenbacker specifically to serve The Limited. One of them was Southern Air Transport.
Southern Air Transport was not a normal cargo airline. It was a CIA proprietary, used during Iran-Contra to resupply the Contras in Nicaragua. Congressional investigations and court records confirmed its intelligence role. When the airline relocated to Columbus in 1996 to serve Wexner’s retail operation, the move was arranged by three men: Jeffrey Epstein, Alan Fiers (a CIA officer who was convicted for his role in the Iran-Contra affair), and Richard Secord (the Air Force Major General who sat at the center of the Iran-Contra weapons pipeline).
Read that list again. Wexner’s financial advisor. A convicted CIA officer. A general who ran illegal arms sales. These are the people who moved a CIA airline to Columbus, Ohio, to fly cargo for a retail clothing company.
The same supply chain served another purpose. Epstein told young women he was a talent scout for Victoria’s Secret. This wasn’t a one-off lie. A 1997 police report from Arden, Ohio documents the Victoria’s Secret scouting claim being used as a recruiting tool. Court testimony confirmed that at least one woman, Melanie Walker, was recruited through a Victoria’s Secret connection and later placed at the Gates Foundation in 2006. The Angels and Demons documentary drew additional connections between Epstein’s recruiting operation and the brand.
Victoria’s Secret wasn’t just a brand. It was a cover story. And The Limited’s supply chain wasn’t just logistics. It was infrastructure.
The Record
Let’s review what we’ve documented so far. A billionaire whose mentor ran a company with confirmed CIA history. A financial advisor with no verifiable credentials who received tens of millions in assets for reasons no one can explain. A CIA airline relocated to serve the billionaire’s company by Iran-Contra figures. A retail brand used as a recruiting cover for sex trafficking. And $190 million paid to the man Wexner now calls a “con man.”
Representative Jesus “Chuy” Garcia stated on the record: “There is no single person that was more involved in providing Jeffrey Epstein with the financial support to commit his crimes than Les Wexner.”
Then there is the Barak connection.
In 2004, the Wexner Foundation paid $2.5 million to Ehud Barak for unspecified “consulting services” and “research.” Barak is the former Israeli Prime Minister. He is the same man the FBI’s own files describe Epstein as being “close to” and “trained as a spy under,” the document we cited in Brief #001. Barak later admitted visiting Epstein’s island. He was photographed leaving Epstein’s Manhattan residence as recently as 2016. And he went on to chair Carbyne911, a surveillance technology startup founded by veterans of Israel’s Unit 8200, with Epstein as an investor.
Wexner’s foundation was writing seven-figure checks to the intelligence figure at the center of Epstein’s alleged recruitment into espionage. The money moved from Wexner to Barak through a philanthropy. The relationship between Barak and Epstein was operational. These are not separate facts.
And yet. No charges. No indictment. No prosecution. Wexner stepped down from L Brands in 2020 after the Epstein connection became impossible to ignore publicly. He issued a statement saying he was “embarrassed” by the relationship. He said he had been “deceived.” But no prosecutor has tested that claim under oath. No grand jury has examined the property transfers, the power of attorney, the CIA airline, the foundation payments.
Until February 2026. When a subpoena finally forced him in front of a camera for five hours. And the best his legal team could do was try to keep his answers under five words.
What Comes Next
Wexner didn’t come from nowhere. He was brought into a network that predates him by decades. His mentor Fisher had alleged ties to organized crime groups that ran bootlegging during Prohibition. Those bootlegging networks connected to another family, one whose name you’ll recognize from every liquor store shelf in America.
During Prohibition, a Canadian family named Bronfman ran one of the largest bootlegging operations on the continent. Their partners included Meyer Lansky, the financial architect of American organized crime, and Lucky Luciano, the man who built the National Crime Syndicate. When Prohibition ended, the Bronfmans didn’t disappear into the underworld. They went legitimate. They built Seagram’s into one of the largest liquor companies in the world. They became philanthropists. And in 1991, Charles Bronfman sat down with Leslie Wexner and co-founded an exclusive private group of twenty of the wealthiest men in America.
That group is called the Mega Group. We’ll get there. But first, you need to understand where the Bronfmans came from and what they brought with them.
Forward this to someone who saw the Wexner deposition clip and wants to know who that man actually is.
HOW WE VERIFIED THIS
The Wexner deposition: Video deposition of Leslie Wexner, February 18, 2026, conducted at Wexner’s Ohio home. Attorney Michael Levy’s whispered remark to Wexner (“I’m going to fucking kill you if you answer another question with more than five words”) captured on recording. Wexner’s testimony that he met Epstein through Bear Stearns executives and the Rothschild family, and that Epstein presented himself as financial adviser to Élie de Rothschild, documented in the deposition video. $190 million total payments to Epstein reported by multiple outlets. Wexner’s denial of knowledge of sex crimes and characterization of Epstein as “con man” from deposition testimony. Widely covered by most news networks.
Max Fisher background: Fisher’s chairmanship of United Brands (1975) and United Fruit’s CIA history (1954 Guatemala coup, Bay of Pigs) are documented in corporate records and congressional testimony. The “like father and son” description of the Fisher-Wexner relationship appears in a 1987 profile. Fortune magazine’s 1990 description of Fisher as “nexus” of the network is from that publication’s reporting.
Property transfers: Nine East 71st Street Corp. purchase price ($13.2M) documented in corporate records and property deeds. Transfer to Epstein for $0 documented in property records and Wexner testimony. $77M valuation from property assessments. $46M New Albany transfers documented in legal filings and property records. Power of attorney arrangement confirmed in Wexner’s own statements.
Allan Tessler and PROMIS connection: Tessler’s appointment to The Limited board in 1987 and his prior representation of Earl Brian’s PROMIS-linked ventures documented in Limited Inc. corporate records and Tessler biographical materials. Webb, Whitney, One Nation Under Blackmail, Volume 2 (2022), Chapter 13.
Southern Air Transport: SAT’s status as a CIA proprietary airline confirmed through Iran-Contra congressional investigations and court records. Relocation to Columbus to serve The Limited documented in investigative reporting (Drop Site News). Roles of Alan Fiers (CIA, convicted in Iran-Contra) and Richard Secord (Iran-Contra weapons pipeline) documented in Iran-Contra investigation records and trial transcripts.
Victoria’s Secret recruitment: 1997 Arden police report documenting Epstein’s use of Victoria’s Secret talent scout claim cited in investigative reporting and referenced in Webb (2022). Melanie Walker’s recruitment through Victoria’s Secret connection and subsequent Gates Foundation placement documented in court testimony and foundation records. Webb, One Nation Under Blackmail, Volume 2, Chapter 19.
FBI co-conspirator listing: Wexner listed as co-conspirator in 2019 FBI investigative file. Representative Garcia’s statement is from the congressional record.
Wexner Foundation and Ehud Barak: $2.5M payment documented in Wexner Foundation records. Barak’s visits to Epstein’s island from Barak’s own public statements. 2016 photograph at Epstein residence documented in media reporting. FBI characterization of Epstein’s relationship with Barak from FD-1023 document cited in Brief #001. Carbyne911 founding by Unit 8200 veterans with Barak as chairman and Epstein as investor documented in company records and biographical materials. Webb, One Nation Under Blackmail, Volume 2, Chapter 21.
SOURCES CITED THIS WEEK
Webb, Whitney. One Nation Under Blackmail, Volumes 1 & 2 (2022)
Drop Site News, reporting on Southern Air Transport and The Limited
FBI FD-1023, Source ID S-00099701, released January 30, 2025 (cited in Brief #001)
Iran-Contra Congressional Investigation records and trial transcripts
Wexner Foundation financial records
Fortune Magazine, 1990 (Fisher profile)
Corporate records: Nine East 71st Street Corp., The Limited Inc., Southern Air Transport
Video deposition of Leslie Wexner, February 18, 2026
THE PRCDNT BRIEF investigates the three-layer system of control: Operations (blackmail, trafficking, financial crimes), Control Systems (media, education, psychological manipulation), and Institutions (intelligence agencies, elite networks, corporate empires).
All claims sourced from declassified documents, on-the-record intelligence histories, and investigative journalism. No speculation. No anonymous sources. Just the documented record.
Want the full picture? Subscribe at lp.prcdnt.app
How did you get this email? Someone who sees the system, not just the symptoms, forwarded this to you. They thought you were ready for the record.
PRCDNT is a historical intelligence feed verifying claims with primary sources. This is email #002 of The PRCDNT Brief.