On February 24, 2020 — half a year after Jeffrey Epstein's death — the Wexner Foundation (a philanthropic group founded by billionaire Leslie Wexner), published an "independent review of" Epstein's "involvement and interactions with" the organization. The review said that the Wexner Foundation's staff had "no contact" with Epstein after he resigned as a trustee in September 2007. And before that, according to the review, Epstein "played no role in the management or administration of the Foundation's operations."

But according to an article published by Drop Site News on December 9, a newly discovered cache of e-mails from 2005-2008 conflicts with the Wexner Foundation's February 24, 2020 "review" of its relationship with Epstein.

According to Drop Site News reporters Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain, "Hundreds of leaked e-mails from Epstein's Yahoo inbox, spanning from 2005 to 2008, contradict the Wexner Foundation report. Inside the Wexners' family financial office in Ohio, staff treated Epstein as de facto chief financial officer, where major decisions about taxes, lines of credit, eight-figure funds transfers, and politically sensitive grants were routed through Epstein's lawyer, and required Epstein's approval."

Grim and Hussain report that the "new e-mail cache" was "vetted and published by Distributed Denial of Secrets, and contains many of the same forensic signatures as the dataset reported by Bloomberg earlier this year."

"The e-mails show that Darren Indyke, who served as both Epstein's personal lawyer and attorney for the (Wexner) Foundation, was the 'middleman' in such communications, cloaking Epstein's foundation-related activities with attorney-client privilege," the Drop Site News reporters explain. "Indyke is also the executor of Epstein's estate, which has been accused of 'obstructionism' for withholding 'privileged' e-mails from civil lawsuits and congressional subpoenas. The Wexner Foundation's independent reviewers did not have access to the e-mails published here, because, according to the 2020 report, 'the Foundation's archive of e-mails does not go back to Epstein's time as a Trustee.'"

Grim and Hussain continue, "On paper, the Wexner family's philanthropic foundation and their retail empire, once home to Victoria's Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Bath & Body Works, were legally separate and largely had their own staff. But, in practice, as is typical of such foundations, one small family office sat over both the family's fortune and philanthropy. Internal e-mails between Epstein, Indyke, and Wexner's staff show Epstein as the effective boss of the family office, and the real gatekeeper of the Wexners' money."

Grim and Hussain note that Wexner financial controller Peg Ugland "wrote to Indyke" in "e-mail after e-mail" and cited "account balances for a web of Wexner entities — charitable trusts, private investment vehicles, and personal trading accounts — with a recurring refrain: 'Please ask Jeffrey if I can transfer.'"

One of the e-mails mentioned attorney Abigail Koppel.

"Four days before Jeffrey Epstein submitted his guilty plea to state charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution, on June 26, 2008," according to the Drop Site News journalists, "Leslie Wexner sent his friend an e-mail: 'Abigail told me the result…. all I can say is I feel sorry. You violated your own number 1 rule…. Always be careful.' Epstein's reply to Wexner was contrite: 'no excuse.'"

Read Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain's full article for Drop Site News at this link.

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