Ohio State should have known about Wexner's Epstein problems by Sept. 18, 2009
Epstein files show that then-Ohio State Board of Trustees chairman Leslie Wexner was served in a Jane Doe lawsuit against the since-deceased sex trafficker in 2009.
The New York Times recently reported on Jeffrey Epstein’s “draft” of a letter to Central Ohio billionaire Leslie Wexner dated “years” after their “acrimonious” severance in 2007.
In the memo, Epstein reminisced about doing 15 years of “gang stuff” with Wexner and the many “aggressive” and “false” allegations he faced from Wexner’s wife, Abigail, which he would have had to betray Wexner’s confidence to answer truthfully.
In retrospect, The New York Times surprisingly didn’t capture the creepy eeriness of the letter in its entirety, which you can view below:
In the second paragraph, Epstein revealed that John Zeiger, Wexner’s longtime lawyer and current chairman of the Ohio State Board of Trustees, acted as an intermediary between the longtime friends, business partners, and, according to Epstein’s final cellmate, lovers.
Why did Epstein seem to think it was possible to rekindle his friendship with Wexner, despite Wexner’s claims that Epstein paid him $100 million after “misappropriating vast sums” of his fortune?
While we lack the date on the letter or knowledge of whether it was ever delivered to Wexner, The Rooster can reveal that Wexner was dealing with Epstein-related fallout in September 2009, when he chaired the Ohio State Board of Trustees.
We know this thanks to Epstein’s emails, which show that Wexner’s representation—likely Zeiger himself—accepted service of a subpoena in an Epstein-related “Jane Doe” lawsuit that also sought testimony from Donald Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell on or about Aug. 5, 2009:
This would have been headline news involving any trustee at the University of Ohio State, let alone the billionaire megadonor being served alongside another well-known billionaire in Donald Trump.
Curiously, Wexner immediately gaveled the Board of Trustees into executive session at their next meeting on Sept. 18, 2009:
It’s impossible to say what they talked about during that session—perhaps lawyers representing Ohio State’s sexual abuse survivors in the Dr. Richard Strauss case can ask Wexner in the upcoming deposition that a federal judge ordered on Wednesday.
But we do know that Vice President E. Gordon Gee, who recently accused survivors of engaging in cancel culture by demanding answers from Epstein, served as Ohio State’s president on Sept. 2009 after Wexner personally recruited him from Vanderbilt.
We also know that, at another unknown date, Zeiger filed an official request for a copy of a settlement agreement between Epstein and “Jane Doe No. 102.”
Only Wexner and Zeiger would know if Jane Doe No. 102 is the same Jane Doe referenced in the email thread about Wexner’s counsel accepting service in a lawsuit against Epstein.
Only Wexner would know if Epstein’s financial settlement to quash the lawsuit was part of the “great debt” that Epstein claimed Wexner owed him.
And only Epstein would know if the late Virginia Giuffre was the “bottom-feeder” that was attempting to “extort” Wexner.
We do, however, know that Giuffre claimed Epstein trafficked her to Wexner, who raped her several times.
We also know, thanks to a file mysteriously deleted by the Department of Justice after The Rooster cited the document on Feb. 2, that Zeiger’s junior business partner, Marion Little, and Zeiger’s son, Matthew, filed an amicus brief in defense of Ghislaine Maxwell in a case against Giuffre and Miami Herald reporter Julie Brown in July 2025:
That filing, by the way, came roughly three years after a federal judge sentenced Maxwell to 20 years in prison for her crimes. That filing also came approximately three months after Giuffre died by suicide.
John Zeiger, meanwhile, has continued to serve as Ohio State’s ostensible leader through two of its darkest chapters, with Wexner only recently eclipsing Dr. Richard Strauss.
Both chapters remain unfinished, with The Rooster breaking the story on Monday about Epstein having Ohio State ob-gyn chairman Dr. Mark Landon on an annual retainer, and Wexner only forced to the deposition room on Wednesday.
We still don’t know what we don’t know.
But we do know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Zeiger was helping Wexner avoid Epstein-related fallout as soon as the Fall of 2009—a little over a year after Wexner told Epstein he had nobody to blame but himself for his upcoming sweetheart prison sentence because he violated his “No. 1 rule” to “be careful… always.”
We’re now at a point that Wexner and Zeiger never imagined in 2009: Their emails exposing their machinations almost 20 years later.
But here we are, with The Ohio State University being managed by the lawyer of a man the FBI considered an Epstein co-conspirator as recently as 2019.
And we still don’t know why that case evaporated under Trump’s Department of Justice, while we do know that at least one of Epstein’s victims thought Wexner and Trump had valuable insights into the crimes against her.
If Zeiger actually cared about Ohio State, rather than just as a proxy to protecting his longtime benefactor, he’d have already resigned from his sinecure and saved the university the embarrassment.
The Rooster vows to continue embarrassing Wexner, and by extension, Zeiger, until the chairman comes to his senses.
Thank you D.J. for this dogged reporting. I’m reading in horror, but we need to know.
Bro it starts to look like you are single handedly going to bring down a billionaire and the entire leadership of OSU. Rooster for governor.