Ohio Senate Candidates Spar Over Donations Tied, Loosely or Not, to Epstein

Ohio voters are witnessing a battle of campaign television ads as each Senate candidate tries to tie the other to Jeffrey Epstein — by way of donations from those with some link to the late convicted sex offender.

Democrat Sherrod Brown’s campaign charges that Republican Sen. Jon Husted “took more money from Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirators than anyone else in Washington, and then voted to keep the Epstein files secret.” The donations total $116,892 over more than 20 years. Husted’s TV spot, meanwhile, calls Brown “a liar,” saying that Husted “voted to release the Epstein files” and that Brown took $100,000 “from Epstein associates.” Those contributions date back to 2005.

Whether the campaign donations are problematic is a matter of opinion that we leave to voters to decide. We’ll lay out who gave the money.

In Husted’s case, all contributions came from Les Wexner, the founder and former CEO of L Brands, an Ohio-based retail company that included The Limited and Victoria’s Secret. Wexner, who knew Epstein and hired him to be his financial manager for many years, was listed in a 2019 FBI document as a “co-conspirator,” hence the description in the Brown ad. But he has never been charged with a crime. In February, after his inclusion in the document became public, Wexner said he “never witnessed nor had any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activity.”

This year, Husted donated about $34,000 of the more recent Wexner donations to a charity, his campaign said, noting this was “all the funds that were available.”