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Extracted Text (OCR)
SPOILS OF SUCCESS
From top: Epstein’s 70-
acre island. Little St.
James, in the U.S. Virgin
Islands—he now calls
it Little St. Jeff: Epstein
with President Clinton in
Brunei, 2002: Leslie
Wexner with his future
wife, Abigail, at the 1990
C.ED.A. Fashion Awards,
in New York. 1991.
Larry Summers, Harvard’s current presi-
dent. Harvard law professor Alan Dersho-
witz says, “I’m on my 20th book.... The
only person outside of my immediate family
that I send drafts to is Jeffrey.” Real-estate
developer and philanthropist Marshall Rose,
who has worked with Epstein on projects in
New Albany. Ohio, for Wexner. says, “He
digests and decodes the information very
rapidly, which is to me terrific because we
have shorter meetings.”
Also on the list of admirers are former
senator George Mitchell and a gaggle of
distinguished scientists, most of whom
Epstein has helped fund in recent years.
They include Nobel Prize winners Gerald
BO O7/Q6/IW i TY F.1R
“Jeffrey | knows} when
Neste He will
let you choose your =
weapon, says Wexner.
Edelman and Murray Gell-
Mann, and mathematical
biologist Martin Nowak.
When these
Epstein, thev talk
“energy” and “curiosity,” as
well as a love for theoretu-
cal physics that thev dont
ordinarily find in laymen.
Gell-Mann rather sweetly
“there are al-
around”
men describe
k about
mentions that
ways pretty ladies
when he goes to dinner c/tez
Epstein, and he’s under the
Epstein’s clients include the Queen of En-
gland. Both Nowak and Dershowitz were
thrilled to find themselves shaking the hand
of a man named “Andrew” in Epstein’s
house. “Andrew” turned out to be Prince
Andrew, who subsequently arranged to sit
in the back of Dershowitz’s law class.
Epstein gets annoyed when anyone sug-
gests that Wexner “made him.” “I had real-
ly rich clients before,” he has said. Yet he
does not deny that he and Wexner have a
special relationship. Epstein sees it as a
partnership of equals. “People have said it’s
like we have one brain between two of us:
each has a side.”
impression that
Page 15 of 151
aunt.
Public Records Request No.: 174295 cH 2003
“I think we both possess the skill of
seeing patterns,” says Wexner. “But Jef-
frey sees patterns in politics and finan-
cial markets, and I see patterns in lifestyle
and fashion trends. My skills are not in in-
vestment strategy, and, as everyone who
knows Jeffrey knows, his are not in fash-
ion and design. We frequently discuss
world trends as each of us sees them.”
y the time Epstein met
Wexner, the latter was a
retail legend who had
built a $3 billion em-
pire—one that now in-
cludes Victoria's Secret,
Express, and Bath &
Body Works—from $5,000 lent him by his
“Wexner saw in Jeffrey the type of
person who had the potential to real-
ize his [Jeffrey’s] dreams,” says some-
one who has worked closely with
both men. “He gave Jeffrey the ball.
and Jeffrey hit it out of the park.”
Wexner, through a trust. bought
the town house in which Epstein
now lives for a reported $13.2
million in 1989. In Wex-
ner married Abigail Koppel.
a 3l-vear-old lawyer.
newlyweds relocated to Ohio:
in 1996, Epstein moved in-
to the town house. Public
documents suggest that the house
1993
and the
is still owned by the trust that bought it.
but Epstein has said that he now owns the
house.
Wexner trusts Epstein so completely
that he has assigned him the power of fidu-
ciary over all of his private trusts and foun-
dations, says a source close to Wexner. In
1992. Epstein even persuaded Wexner to
put him on the board of the Wexner Foun-
dation in place of Wexner’s ailing mother.
Bella Wexner recovered and demanded to
be reinstated. Epstein has said they settled
by splitting the foundation in two
Epstein does not care that he comes be-
tween family members. In f =i he sees it
as his job. He tells people, “I am there to
represent my client, and if my client needs
protecting—sometimes even from his own
family—then it’s often better that people
hate me, not the client.”
“You've probably heard I’m vicious in
my representation of my clients.” he tel
people proudly; Leah Kleman describes his
hageling over art prices as something like
a scene out of the movie Mad Max: Be-
yond Thunderdome. Even a former mentor
says he’s seen “the dark side” of Epstein,
and a Bear Stearns source recalls a meet-
ing in which Epstein chewed out a team
a presentation for Wexner as
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