By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON, Jan 7 (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee will subpoena billionaire Leslie Wexner to sit for a deposition before the panel over his ties with late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a Democratic lawmaker on the panel said on Wednesday.
“We secured key subpoenas for billionaire benefactor Les Wexner, and the executors of the Epstein estate,” Democratic Congressman Robert Garcia said in a statement in which he also thanked Republican U.S. Representative Anna Paulina Luna.
Republicans currently hold a narrow majority in the House of Representatives. The panel voted to approve the subpoenas on Wednesday.
Wexner has previously been in focus for his association with the late financier, who was entrusted with managing the billionaire’s personal finances and served as the trustee of his charitable foundation.
Wexner, a former CEO and founder of Victoria’s Secret-owner L Brands, has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing. The Wexner Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment late on Wednesday.
President Donald Trump’s administration, under pressure from Trump’s political base, has ordered the U.S. Justice Department to release files tied to criminal probes of Epstein, who was friends with Trump in the 1990s, in compliance with a transparency law passed by Congress.
Trump had earlier made efforts to keep the files sealed. Trump has said he had a falling-out with the disgraced financier long before Epstein’s 2019 death in jail.
The Justice Department revealed in late December it has 5.2 million pages of Epstein files left to review. Epstein had ties with many politicians and influential figures from different walks of life.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; editing by Michelle Nichols and Lincoln Feast.)
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