Jeffrey Epstein Was Useful, So He Was Protected by the government
The question was never why the system failed to stop Jeffrey Epstein but why the system kept him running for so damn long in the first place
The Maria and Virginia Series
Part One | Part Two | Part 4 | Part 5
A 1992 lease connects Epstein to the former residence of Iran’s Deputy Consul General, administered by the U.S. State Department. In 2019, the FBI named Les Wexner a co-conspirator in its Epstein investigation, a designation the DOJ kept redacted until February 2026. A confidential source told the FBI that Epstein had been described as belonging to intelligence. And the man who built Epstein’s entire financial empire was deposed by Congress in 2026 and has still never been charged. The question was never why the system failed to stop Jeffrey Epstein. The question is why the system kept him running for so long.
34 East 69th Street, Manhattan — leased by Jeffrey Epstein from the U.S. State Department’s Office of Foreign Missions beginning in February 1992. The property had been the official residence of Iran’s Deputy Consul General. Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Gryffindor
LPF Trail
In Part One, I told you about Maria Farmer and Virginia Giuffre. The women who reported Epstein first and who paid the price for telling the truth. Who were abandoned by every institution that should have protected them.
In Part Two, I showed you the classified FBI file from 1997. The full investigation that the FBI opened nine years before they told the world they had started looking. The 9year gap. The SECRET//NOFORN classification and the case title still restricted in the public release.
Part Three is about why.
Not why in the emotional sense, but why in the documented sense. What the records show about what Epstein was, who he served, and why a man reported to the FBI in 1996, secretly investigated in 1997, and known to be running a trafficking operation was allowed to operate until bloody 2019.
The answer is in the DOJ’s released documents. It has been hiding in plain sight and some of the most important pieces only became visible in the weeks since this series began.
34 East 69th Street
Start with a real estate transaction — February 1992. Jeffrey Epstein signs a lease on a property at 34 East 69th Street in Manhattan. This address is not a famous one. It is not the 71st Street townhouse that would later become synonymous with his crimes, but it is a different building entirely, and the landlord of it is the United States government.
The property at 34 East 69th Street had been the official residence of the Deputy General Consul of Iran. When the United States severed diplomatic relations with Iran in 1980, the Secretary of State was entrusted with the care and maintenance of Iranian diplomatic properties under the Foreign Missions Act. The building passed into the administration of the Office of Foreign Missions, the State Department’s arm for managing foreign diplomatic real estate in the United States. Importantly, the property remained Iranian government property under international law. The US was the administrator, not the owner of the property
In February 1992, OFM entered into a two year lease with Jeffrey Epstein. 15,000 dollars per month. Under the Foreign Missions Act and the Vienna Convention, the property remained technically owned by Iran — which means that Epstein was paying rent to the US government for Iranian government property.
The lease was extended in August 1992, running through til January 1997. Epstein and his family resided there until January 1996, when he vacated and abandoned the premises without notifying the State Department. OFM did not discover the abandonment for several months after this fact.
What Epstein had been doing in those intervening months became the subject of a federal lawsuit — in October 1996, the US government filed suit against Epstein in the Southern District of New York, case number 96 CIV 8307. The allegation: Epstein had violated his lease by vacating without permission and subletting the property without the required written consent of OFM. He had been subletting it for $20,000 per month, five thousand dollars more than he was paying the government. His subtenant was Ivan Fisher, a Manhattan criminal defense attorney who had famously represented members of both the French Connection and Pizza Connection drug rings.
An OFM official who had served as the point person for Epstein’s lease later testified in deposition that Epstein had been actively shopping the property to other tenants without the State Department’s knowledge. Real estate agents were calling OFM asking about the building, someone had given them a copy of Epstein’s lease. Fisher, for his part, later stopped paying rent after learning the State Department had terminated the lease and was for a time living there for free. He was later disbarred from federal court practice in 2013 after a court grievance committee found he had misappropriated client funds.
The government prevailed — JE was evicted from the building and the case closed. However, the questions this opened have never been answered.
How did Jeffrey Epstein, a private citizen with no diplomatic status and no government employment, come to lease a former Iranian consular residence administered by the U.S. State Department in 1992? Who authorized his access to a diplomatically sensitive property? And why does a document referencing this property, EFTA00187391, appear in the FBI’s Epstein file dump alongside counterintelligence documents?
Epstein leased a former residence of the Deputy Consul General of Iran from the US State Department in 1992. When he vacated without permission and sublet it to a lawyer for the French Connection drug ring, the government sued him. Who authorized his original access has never been explained.
— Last Page First
The 71st Street mansion, the one that became notorious, was a separate property entirely. Epstein moved there in January 1996, announcing to the New York Times that it was now his — it had previously belonged to Leslie Herbert Wexner.
The Money Behind the Empire
Les Wexner at the Woodrow Wilson Award ceremony. Wexner hired Jeffrey Epstein as his personal financial manager in 1987 and granted him full power of attorney in 1991. The FBI named Wexner an unindicted co-conspirator in an internal document dated August 2019. The Department of Justice kept his name redacted until February 2026.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons / U.S. Embassy
Les Wexner gave Jeffrey Epstein his fortune. That is not a metaphor, it is literal. It is documented fact across hundreds of pages of released FBI materials, court filings, and Congressional records.
Wexner hired Epstein as his financial manager in 1987 and by July 1991, Wexner had granted Epstein full power of attorney, the authority to buy and sell assets, hire people, sign tax returns, and move money on Wexner’s behalf, without requiring his direct approval.
Read our piece that touches on this here. More to come on Wexner
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The FBI’s released files describe this arrangement plainly: Epstein controlled all of Wexner’s personal finances with virtually no oversight.
Wexner bought the Manhattan mansion at 9 East 71st Street, the Herbert N. Straus House, for $13.2 million in 1989. He never appeared to live there though, and Epstein moved in by at least 1995 and boasted to the New York Times in 1996 that it was now his. In 1998, bank documents show, Wexner’s company formally sold the property to an Epstein-controlled corporation for $20 million, paid in installments through March 2000. In 2011, it was transferred again from one Epstein corporate vehicle to another for $0. The property was sold in 2021 by Epstein’s estate for $51 million, with proceeds going to victims’ compensation.
Epstein also acquired a Boeing 727, the plane that would become known as the ‘Lolita Express,’ originally owned by Wexner’s company. He served as a trustee of the Wexner Foundation and was listed as co president of The New Albany Company, Wexner’s Ohio real estate development entity, in a 1998 state filing.
In the mid 1990s, according to investigative reporting by Columbus journalist Bob Fitrakis, whose findings were subsequently published in The American Conservative and Drop Site News in December 2025, Epstein was the key logistics man behind relocating Southern Air Transport (SAT), a cargo airline with documented CIA ties and a central role in the IranContra scandal, from Miami to Columbus in 1995. The Limited, Wexner’s retail empire, was the primary cargo client that made the relocation economically viable. In 1996, US Customs agents found a hidden cocaine shipment on one of Southern Air’s planes. The airline filed for bankruptcy on October 1, 1998, exactly one week before the CIA Inspector General released its report detailing the agency’s own findings on SAT’s role in Contra-era drug trafficking allegations. No declassified federal record has yet been published that explicitly names Epstein in SAT documents. The connection rests on local investigative reporting and circumstantial documentation. Last Page First has not independently verified this connection beyond the published reporting cited.
None of this has resulted in charges against Wexner — but what changed in the weeks since the Epstein file release is the public record of what investigators believed.
On February 10, 2026, Congressman Ro Khanna took to the floor of the US House of Representatives and read aloud the names of six men whose identities had been redacted in the publicly released Epstein files. One of them was Les Wexner. Khanna said the FBI had labeled Wexner an unindicted coconspirator in investigative documents drafted shortly after Epstein’s 2019 death. An August 2019 FBI document released in the file dump lists Wexner among eight co-conspirators, specifically as a ‘secondary’ coconspirator, while noting there is ‘limited evidence’ regarding his involvement.
Wexner’s legal team immediately responded.
Their statement: the U. Attorney in charge of the Epstein investigation told Wexner’s counsel in 2019 that he was not a coconspirator or target in any respect, he cooperated and was never contacted again.
Wexner has never been charged and he denies knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. He says Epstein misappropriated ‘vast sums’ from him, a claim supported by the documents, which show Epstein repaid Wexner approximately $100 million in a 2008 settlement, thought to be only a portion of what he stole.
On February 19, 2026, Wexner was deposed by five members of the House Oversight Committee at his Ohio estate. Democrats who participated said the deposition raised more questions than it answered.
After JPMorgan Chase reviewed transactions connected to the Epstein investigation, it filed suspicious activity reports covering transactions by Wexner, Glenn Dubin, Leon Black, and Alan Dershowitz totaling approximately $1 billion. No charges followed.
In July 2019, the FBI named Wexner among Epstein’s co-conspirators. The Justice Department kept his name redacted until Congress forced the disclosure in February 2026. He has still never been charged.
— Last Page First
The Portrait That Puts Them All Together
In October 2002, artist Nelson Shanks filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The defendants: Leslie Wexner. Abigail Wexner. Jeffrey Epstein. Ghislaine Maxwell. Case number 2:02-cv-07671.
The suit was over an unpaid portrait commission. In early 2000, Epstein had dispatched Maxwell to approach Shanks, an artist whose previous subjects included Princess Diana, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and Bill Clinton, about painting a portrait of Abigail Wexner and her four children as a gift from Epstein to the Wexner family. Maxwell confirmed the commission in a letter dated May 16, 2000: the cost would be $325,000. With the frame, the total reached $339,900.
Shanks completed the portrait and delivered it. The Wexner’s found it unflattering. Epstein refused to pay. Shanks sued.
The case was filed in October 2002. Virginia Giuffre had first been trafficked by Epstein in 1999 or 2000. Maria Farmer had reported Epstein to the FBI in 1996. The classified FBI investigation had opened in 1997. And here, in a routine civil lawsuit over a portrait, are Epstein and Maxwell named as co-defendants in a matter that reveals the texture of their daily operation: embedded in the Wexner household, handling family gifts, managing relationships, conducting business.
The case settled in October 2003, just before depositions were set to begin. All exhibits were sealed.
Not a peripheral detail — a portrait, commissioned as a gift, brokered by Maxwell, and refused by Wexner. The art piece was litigated by a painter who had also worked for Bill Clinton, and buried in a sealed settlement before anyone had to testify under oath about what they knew and when they knew it.
The Intelligence Question
The most sensitive claim in the Epstein files is not about trafficking, but rather about what Epstein was doing, and for whom.
In May 2019, journalist Vicky Ward reported in The Daily Beast that a single anonymous source, described as a ‘former senior White House official,’ told her that when Acosta was being vetted by the Trump transition team in 2017, he explained his decision on the Epstein plea deal by saying: ‘I was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave it alone.’ Acosta has since denied this under oath in multiple proceedings: to DOJ OPR investigators, at his July 2019 press conference, and in congressional testimony. Ward’s anonymous source has never been identified publicly, and the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility found no evidence to support the intelligence claim. Some have speculated the source was Steve Bannon, based on circumstantial evidence. This has not been confirmed and Bannon has not publicly addressed it.
Then, in the 2026 Epstein file dump, a separate document records information from a different confidential human source, a CHS in FBI parlance, who alleged that Epstein’s attorney Alan Dershowitz told Acosta directly that Epstein ‘belonged to both U.S. and allied intelligence services.’ The FBI document itself notes these are the claims of the informant alone and are not independently corroborated. Dershowitz has denied the allegation. This is a second, independent transmission of a similar claim, but it is still unverified informant testimony, not confirmed fact.
What this source was alleging, however, connects to a separate and documented thread: the 813B counterintelligence prefix on the companion FBI case, EFTA01683874. Counterintelligence cases are not opened for financial crimes or ordinary sex offenses. They are opened when a foreign intelligence service or asset is believed to be involved. The prefix is in the document. It has not been explained.
There is also this: in July 2019, Epstein’s longtime employer and closest associate was named by FBI investigators as a co-conspirator. The co founder of the Mega Group, a private network of major Jewish American philanthropists and business leaders described in a 2002 Forward investigation and subsequent reporting as having maintained contact with Israeli intelligence The Wexner Foundation paid former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak approximately $2.3 million for commissioned research between 2004 and 2006.
The accumulation of documented facts, the counterintelligence prefix, the OFM building, the nine-year gap between the 1997 investigation and the public acknowledgment of federal interest in 2006, the non-prosecution agreement with its unprecedented co-conspirator immunity language, forms a set of questions that no official account has ever answered.
A confidential source told the FBI that Epstein belonged to intelligence. The claim is unverified. The 813B counterintelligence prefix in his FBI file is not.
— Last Page First
Breaking: Since This Series Began
These developments occurred during or after the publication of Parts One and Two:
Feb 10, 2026: Rep. Khanna names Wexner on the House floor as an improperly redacted co-conspirator. DOJ unredacts the FBI document.
Feb 11, 2026: U.S. District Court denies Wexner’s motion to quash a subpoena in the Ohio State University abuse case, ordering him to testify.
Feb 19, 2026: Wexner deposed by Congress in Ohio. Democrats say the session raised more questions than it answered.
Mar 5, 2026: DOJ releases previously withheld FBI interview summaries of a woman who alleged sexual abuse by Epstein and President Trump, following an NPR investigation that found dozens of pages missing from the public database.
Mar 2026: House Oversight Committee votes 24-19 to subpoena AG Pam Bondi for testimony on the DOJ’s handling of the Epstein files.
The Documented Timeline
1987
Wexner hires Epstein as his personal financial manager.
1989
Wexner purchases 9 East 71st Street, the Herbert N. Straus House, for $13.2 million. He never substantially moves in.
Jul 1991
Wexner grants Epstein full power of attorney. Epstein named trustee of Wexner Foundation.
Feb 1992
Epstein signs lease on 34 East 69th Street, former residence of the Deputy Consul General of Iran, administered by U.S. State Dept. OFM. Source: U.S. v. Epstein, 96 CIV. 8307; EFTA00187391.
1995
Southern Air Transport, CIA-linked cargo airline central to Iran-Contra, relocates from Miami to Columbus, Ohio. Epstein reported as the logistics point person. Source: local investigative reporting, Bob Fitrakis / Columbus Alive; The American Conservative / Drop Site, Dec. 2025.
1995
Maria Farmer meets Epstein and Maxwell at her 1996 thesis show at the New York Academy of Art.
Summer 1996
Epstein arranges for Farmer to visit Wexner’s New Albany, Ohio estate. She later says she was sexually assaulted there by Epstein and Maxwell, and that Wexner’s security team refused to let her leave.
1996
Maria Farmer reports Epstein to the FBI, among the first to file an FBI complaint against him. U.S. Customs agents find a hidden cocaine shipment on a Southern Air Transport plane.
Jan 1996
Epstein vacates 34 East 69th Street without notifying the State Department. Moves to the Wexner mansion at 71st Street. Begins subletting the OFM property to Ivan Fisher for $20,000/month without written consent.
Oct 1996
U.S. government files federal suit against Epstein, U.S. v. Epstein, 96 CIV. 8307, for violating his OFM lease.
Dec 1997
FBI opens SECRET//NOFORN classified full investigation on Epstein. Case number EFTA01683603. Case title still restricted in public release. Companion case EFTA01683874 carries 813B counterintelligence prefix.
Oct 1, 1998
Southern Air Transport files for bankruptcy in Columbus. Exactly one week later, the CIA Inspector General releases its official findings on SAT’s role in Contra-era drug trafficking allegations.
1998
Wexner’s company formally sells the 71st Street mansion to Epstein’s corporation for $20 million, paid in installments.
Oct 2002
Nelson Shanks files Shanks v. Wexner, 2:02-cv-07671 (E.D. Pa.). Defendants: Leslie Wexner, Abigail Wexner, Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell. Portrait commissioned via Maxwell as Epstein’s agent, $325,000; $339,900 total with frame.
2004-2006
Wexner Foundation pays former Israeli PM Ehud Barak approximately $2.3 million for commissioned research.
Oct 2003
Shanks v. Wexner settles days before depositions begin. All exhibits sealed.
2005
Palm Beach police begin investigation after parents of a 14-year-old report Epstein molested their daughter.
May 2006
FBI formally opens Operation Leap Year. Source: EFTA01683603.
Sept 2007
Non-prosecution agreement signed. Federal immunity for all crimes committed before this date. Immunity extended to all co-conspirators, known and unknown.
June 2008
Epstein pleads guilty to state charges. Sentenced to 18 months. Serves 13.
2019
FBI names Wexner among Epstein co-conspirators. JPMorgan files suspicious activity reports covering transactions by Wexner, Dubin, Black, and Dershowitz totaling approximately $1 billion. No charges result. Epstein arrested July 2019. Dies in custody August 10, 2019.
Feb 10, 2026
Rep. Ro Khanna names Wexner on House floor as one of six men whose names were improperly redacted from the publicly released Epstein files. DOJ unredacts the August 2019 FBI co-conspirator document.
Feb 19, 2026
Wexner deposed by five House Oversight Committee members at his Ohio estate. Democrats say the deposition raised more questions than answers.
This is not conspiracy theory, it is a timeline. Every item has a document number, a case citation, or an on-record source.
The nine year gap between the 1997 secret investigation and the 2006 public investigation has never been explained. The 813B counterintelligence prefix has never been explained. The OFM building has never been explained. The co-conspirator immunity in the NPA has never been explained.
Maria Farmer reported him in 1996. The FBI opened a secret investigation in 1997. He continued operating until 2019. Twenty-two years.
He was not invisible to power. He was embedded in it. He managed the fortune of a man the FBI named his co-conspirator. He leased a former Iranian diplomatic residence from the State Department. He operated under a non-prosecution agreement that immunized everyone around him. And when he was finally arrested and died in federal custody, the co-conspirators were never charged.
The 2019 FBI document naming co-conspirators, the one the Justice Department kept redacted until Congress forced disclosure in February 2026, lists eight names. The DOJ has said there was not enough evidence to charge any of them.
The case title in EFTA01683603 is still restricted.
Maria Farmer is still waiting for an answer.
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Primary Sources
EFTA00187391 — Epstein OFM lease, 1992
https://www.justice.gov/epstein-files-transparency-act
EFTA01683603 — 1997 classified full investigation, SECRET//NOFORN
https://www.justice.gov/epstein-files-transparency-act
EFTA01683874 — 813B counterintelligence companion case
https://www.justice.gov/epstein-files-transparency-act
U.S. v. Epstein, S.D.N.Y. No. 96 CIV. 8307 — OFM eviction case
https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2346291/united-states-v-epstein/
Shanks v. Wexner, 2:02-cv-07671 (E.D. Pa.) — CourtListener docket
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/11742516/shanks-v-wexner/
Clemente v. FBI, 20-cv-1527 — CourtListener docket
https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/8515941/clemente-v-fbi-dc/
DOJ OPR Report on NPA — November 2020
https://www.justice.gov/file/1334266/download
BuzzFeed News — State Dept. OFM / Epstein lease original reporting
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/jeffrey-epstein-state-department
CNN — DOJ unredacts Wexner co-conspirator document, Feb. 10, 2026
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/10/politics/epstein-files-unredacted-names/index.html
Maria Farmer lawsuit vs. FBI — May 29, 2025
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18559875/farmer-v-federal-bureau-of-investigation/
Southern Air Transport — Epstein / Wexner / CIA connection (The American Conservative / Drop Site, Dec. 2025)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/southern-air-transport-epstein-wexner-cia-connection/