ZeroHedge claims that Stacey Williams can’t be telling the truth because Epstein didn’t move into the Wexner Mansion until 1996. I will show that the mansion was vacant from January 1993 onward and that Epstein very well may have stayed there. (All emphasis in quotes is my own). First:
Epstein’s predecessor Harold Levin described a possible scenario by which Epstein could have taken control of assets. “We didn’t put a mortgage on any of those properties. We used The Limited’s stock to buy them, so there were no liens,” Levin said. In other words, because Wexner didn’t owe banks any money, his properties could be controlled by Epstein, and there would be scant public record of it. Vanity Fair
Epstein oversaw the building of Wexner’s superyacht and had his hand in all of his finances and business. Eventually, Wexner will grant Epstein power of attorney on July 29, 1999. They had a weird sort of friendship. Here’s what we know:
Mr. Wexner bought the house in 1989 for $13.2 million and lavished tens of millions on renovations, art and furnishings. Those curious to see the princely accommodations Mr. Wexner abandoned need look no further than the cover of last month’s Architectural Digest. When asked how long Mr. Wexner had occupied the property, Jeffrey Epstein, his protege and one of his financial advisers, replied, “Les never spent more than two months there.” Thus the prorated cost of Mr. Wexner’s sejours would appear to have been in excess of a million dollars a day. NYTimes
Where are the reports that he moved into it in 1996? Another Vanity Fair article:
Wexner, through a trust, bought the town house in which Epstein now lives for a reported $13.2 million in 1989. In 1993, Wexner married Abigail Koppel, a 31-year-old lawyer, and the newlyweds relocated to Ohio; in 1996, Epstein moved into the town house. Public documents suggest that the house is still owned by the trust that bought it, but Epstein has said that he now owns the house. Vanity Fair
That would mean that from January 23, 1993 onward, the mansion that Epstein had so desired was vacant. The kid born in Brooklyn had made it to the Upper East Side and in an opulent mansion, no less. In the same NYT article that is quoted above they reported, “Reached in Florida last week, Mr. Epstein said that the house was now his.”
There is little difference between the house being “his” and him having access to and free reign over it. It isn’t certain whether it was sold in 1996, 2007, or 2011, or whether it was a $0, $1, or $20 million deal.
What we can be sure about is that Wexner wasn’t there in 1993, and no one really knows where Epstein was. He has a ranch in New Mexico, a private island, a mansion in Palm Beach, a 10,000-square-foot house next to Wexner’s in Ohio, and he spends time in NYC and Paris. From Vanity Fair:
Eventually, in 1991, insurance regulators in Illinois sued Hoffenberg. He settled the case, and Epstein, who was only a paid consultant, was never deposed or accused of any wrongdoing. Barry Gross, the attorney who was handling the suit for the regulators, says of Epstein, “He was very elusive…. It was hard to really track him down. There were a substantial number of checks for significant dollars that were paid to him, I remember…. He was this character we never got a handle on. Again we presumed that he was involved with the Pan Am and Emery run that Hoffenberg made, but we never got a chance to depose him.” Vanity Fair
Nothing in Stacey Williams’s timeline disqualifies what she’s saying.
