Rooster in Review: Leslie Wexner appears in latest Epstein Files dump if you can believe that
Congresswoman Joyce Beatty (D-Columbus)... please call your office.
On Thursday, The Rooster detailed Ohio State’s coordinated defense of central Ohio’s notorious thong salesman Leslie Wexner.
It started with leaking the decision not to remove his name from the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, to ECOT’s former lawyer filing a 128-page defense of Wexner in federal court, to Dr. Richard Strauss enabler E. Gordon Gee defending Wexner on Ohio State’s public radio platform.
Maybe Wexner’s lawyers, led by Ohio State Board of Trustees chairman John Zeiger, knew the Justice Department was set to release millions more pages from the Epstein Files on Friday afternoon.
Maybe this was their plan to push the narrative in public ahead of another potential storm.
Or, perhaps much more likely, they were unaware of the release and are now spending their Friday afternoon combing through three million pages, some of which mention Wexner by name.
From Max Filby of The Columbus Dispatch:
Retail mogul Les Wexner’s name appears multiple times in the latest batch of files on convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein released by the U.S. Department of Justice on Jan. 30.
The DOJ released 3.5 million more files on Epstein in its latest records dump in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed by Congress in 2025.
The Rooster will also be combing through the files and will have more on the specifics on Monday.
But this was always what was foolish about Ohio State, once again, staking themselves to Wexner.
We know that Wexner and his wife, Abigail, have been lying for the past six years about when, exactly, they stopped talking to Jeffrey Epstein after he was charged for molesting a 14-year-old.
We know that, as recently as 2019, the FBI considered Wexner to be one of ten unindicted Epstein co-conspirators.
We don’t know why the Trump Justice Department didn’t follow through on that suspicion, or the information that led them to that descriptor in the first place.
That’s all in the Epstein files, which Trump’s Department of Justice can’t be trusted to release in the full, unredacted manner as required by law. There was always going to be more damaging information about Wexner and his decades-long partnership with the world’s most infamous dead pedophile.
It’s a decision that only makes sense through the lens of Wexner’s private attorney steering Ohio State’s ship on behalf of a client that has paid him a lot more than the university ever will.
Zeiger’s term ends in May. His second-in-command, Liza Kessler, is the daughter of Jack Kessler, Wexner’s longtime builder in New Albany, the city that convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell said Epstein used to “run.”
Ms. Kessler is also the managing partner at Jones Day, a Republican-hobgoblin white-shoe law firm, which would be a title already evil in and of itself. But Jones Day also represented Congressman Jim Jordan, the former Ohio State University assistant wrestling coach, during his deposition in the Dr. Strauss class action lawsuit.
I hope my old friend, Governor Mike DeWine, understands that Wexner is the common thread through this public relations nightmare for our beloved land-grant university.
I know I’ve texted him as much.
But in the meantime, every member of the beautiful House Republican Caucus is on the hook for the $10,000 check from Wexner that its leadership committee cashed late last year.
We’re going to be holding court in the street next week when the State Legislature returns from its three-month-long hiatus.
This week in Ohio Man…
One thing you learn when riding a bicycle is the number of drivers who aren’t paying attention as their weapon of mass destruction careens down one of Ohio’s beautiful paved roads.
That’s something that extends to slow plow drivers, too, though I am sympathetic to the idea that they’re not looking for snowmobiles in the middle of a snowstorm.
From Spectrum News:
FOWLER TOWNSHIP, Ohio — The Ohio State Highway Patrol said Sunday that a man died in Trumbull County after he was hit by a snowplow while riding a snowmobile.
[…]
Richard Coelho Jr., 49, of Vienna, was going south on Ridge Road on a 1999 Ski-Doo snowmobile. Dale Onstott, 45, of Hartford, was heading west on SR 305 while operating a salt/plow truck.
Coelho came to a stop in the intersection, beyond the stop sign, OSHP said. He was then struck by the plow, and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
My heart breaks for Mr. Coelho’s family.
And it’s another reminder that if you’re on the roads and not in a car, you have to remain diligent at all times. Because it only takes one minor mistake, like rolling a stop sign, to have calamitous effects for the person not embedded in a 4,000-pound steel exoskeleton.
This week in The Rooster…
It was a banger work of content at Rooster Worldwide LLC, going the distance with five dispatches in five days.
It was the type of output that makes me proud and reaffirms that The Rooster, for all its flaws, remains unparalleled in the breadth and depth of its coverage
If you enjoy the social media presence, the gonzo-styled interviews of politicians, or even the free dispatch—that’s all sustained by the brave and noble soldiers in The Patriots Caucus.
Even opening free emails helps keep the lights on, but we’d be honored if you considered this moment a divine sign to join the blessed ranks ahead of what should be a hilarious, albeit embarrassing, statewide election cycle.
Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
Here’s some content that you might have missed, especially as a freeloading hog in the parking lot:
The mystery of Madison Sheahan. A cabal of shady suspects has recruited one of the most baffling Congressional candidates of the 2026 election cycle.
Upper Arlington’s mayor kicks off Democratic Statehouse campaign with nest of stone-cold Republicans. Ukeme Awakessien Jeter collaborated with John Kasich’s former communications director to host her campaign kickoff fundraiser.
Sheriff Richard Jones’ cruel and unusual punishment. An immigration attorney who exclusively spoke to The Rooster lays bare the wanton cruelty and brazen criminality at the heart of Sheriff Jones’ mass deportation complex.
The coordinated defense of Leslie Wexner. It turns out that the notorious thong salesman still has some friends at The Ohio State University.
Sorry, haters: The Rooster is bigger than the Everything App. Whether The Rooster stays banned from Twitter or not, we’ll be taking countermeasures to ensure that access to our audience doesn’t depend on the whims of a billionaire.
We’ll do it at the same time and place next week.
Until then, stay frosty, my friends!
THOSE WMDs. The Second Amendment was never meant for everyone… App for quitting porn leaks user’s masturbation habits… I have no mouth and I must scream at Black people: An obituary for Scott Adams… When World War II never fully ended: Infrastructure beyond ideology… A.I. is coming for culture.
My over/under is 500 mentions in 3 mil. docs. And there might just be one or two new and interesting things come up.
It can't be! I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you. Bring me my smelling salts! (It must be a different "Leslie Wexner.")