Ex-Victoria’s Secret CEO Takes Center Stage in Alan Dershowitz Fight

Shadowed by his longtime association with accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, ex-Victoria’s Secret CEO Les Wexner has been dragged into bitter litigation between attorney Alan Dershowitz and prominent accuser Virginia Giuffre.

Often cited as a key source of Epstein’s fortune, Wexner installed Epstein as a trustee of his eponymous foundation in 1991 and granted him power of attorney when the latter was a little-known money manager.

The reason for Wexner’s trust in and professional association with Epstein has long been unclear, and executives for Victoria’s Secrets’ parent company L Brands reportedly raised alarms decades ago that Epstein abused his position by posing as a recruiter to exploit young models. 

Court documents released on Monday could throw Wexner’s association with Epstein into the public glare. Those letters appear to show Wexner’s legal team undermining one of Dershowitz’s central claims against Giuffre.

The records are part of countersuit Dershowitz filed against Giuffre after she accused the Harvard professor of defamation. For his part, Dershowitz says Giuffre has a history of extorting prominent men in the dead pedophile’s circle — among them, Wexner. 

Claiming their requests are “directly relevant to the central allegation” that Giuffre “falsely accused Professor Dershowitz of sexual abuse as part of a scheme to extort Wexner,” Dershowitz’s attorney Howard Cooper issued broad subpoenas to the billionaire Wexner and Wexner’s attorney John Zeiger.

Dershowitz wants any communications between Wexner or Zeiger and Giuffre’s attorneys, including the firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP and attorneys Bradley Edwards, Paul Cassell, or Stanley Pottinger. 

The professor also requested the details of any confidentiality or settlement agreements entered into between Wexner and Giuffre, or any help the clothing tycoon gave to any Epstein accuser in exchange for avoiding depositions in the sprawling litigations. 

Giuffre’s attorney Charles Cooper slammed what he called Dershowitz’s efforts to “put Mr. Wexner at the heart of false and defamatory” smears of his client. 

“For this reason, [Giuffre] was likewise planning on seeking relevant documents and testimony from Mr. Wexner and Mr. Zeiger,” Cooper wrote.

Wexner’s attorney Marion Little, from the firm Zeiger, Tigges & Little LLP, already has undermined Dershowitz’s claim that Giuffre extorted him, in a document backing the Epstein accuser’s position.

“While many of these are discovery subjects that should be, in the first instance, explored with Ms. Giuffre and Mr. Boies, Mr. Zeiger did have communications with Mr. Boies and can readily confirm that: no extortion demand was ever made, no settlement was entered into, and not a penny (or other consideration) was ever paid,” Little wrote in a 4-page letter.  

“Just the opposite is true for Mr. Wexner, however,” the letter continues. “He had no involvement, and thus lacks any personal knowledge relating to, [Dershowitz]’s so-called ‘Extortion Claim.’”

Even if Wexner had the requested information, his counsel claims that Dershowitz sought it for an improper purpose.

“[Dershowitz] has candidly conceded the sole purpose for Mr. Wexner’s deposition is to collaterally attack, with extrinsic evidence, Ms. Giuffre’s credibility,” Little wrote, arguing that such evidence would be inadmissible at any trial.

“If such evidence were permitted here, the resolution of the parties’ claims would involve a series of mini-trials where the jury… would be forced to render de facto verdicts as to non-parties not before the court and who are not presenting their case,” Little’s letter states.

Arguing that any evidence should be subject to a protective order, Little cited a tweet by The Miami Herald’s Julie Brown drawing Wexner further into the Epstein scandal.

“Alan Dershowitz’s attorney confirms that his client has access to Virginia Giuffre’s sealed depositions,” Brown tweeted on June 23, referring to a revelation from a hearing on that day. Those depositions reveal that she was directed by Jeffrey Epstein to have sex with former Israeli PM Ehud Barak & Victoria’s Secret’s Les Wexner.”

For Wexner’s counsel, this showed the need for an enforcement mechanism for contempt of court for the leak of information “given the public and toxic-fashion in which your client has sought to litigate his disputes with Ms. Giuffre.”

Attorneys for Wexner, Dershowitz and Giuffre did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Unsealed this afternoon, their dueling legal briefs were dated late last month. 

Setting a hearing over the matter for Aug. 17, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ordered attorneys for Dershowitz and Giuffre to apprise her of their discussions over the scope of their requests on Thursday.

Wexner said he severed ties with Epstein in 2007, the year of the disgraced financier’s guilty plea to soliciting prostitution of a minor. 

Following Epstein’s sex-trafficking indictment more than a decade later, Wexner claimed that the dead pedophile swiped “vast sums” of money from his fortune. The clothing tycoon stepped down as a L Brands chairman earlier this year.