Ex-Victoria’s Secret mogul Les Wexner is among the elite donors contributing to a powerful pro-Israel lobbying group that hauled $90 million in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks.
According to investigative news outlet The Lever, Wexner pledged $100,000 to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in 2023, alongside billionaire OnlyFans owner Leonid Radvinsky, former Goldmach Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Apollo Global Management co-founder Josh Harris, and onetime Hillary Clinton strategist Mark Penn.
Wexner more recently has made headlines over his relationship with the late sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. In a trove of unsealed court filings, Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre alleged that Wexner “participated in sex with minors” and sexually abused her. (The Ohio-based billionaire has denied these claims and has said he regrets ever meeting Epstein, whom he granted power of attorney in 1991, giving the trafficker control of his assets.)
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Meanwhile, Wexner’s wife Abigail also had ties to the perverted financier, leaving a message for him at his Florida home in 2005. “Abigail Wexner—wants to talk to you @ something private,” states one handwritten note found in the court documents.
The Epstein scandal, however, has done little to blemish Wexner’s influence.
In October, Wexner’s foundation cut financial ties with Harvard over what it called then university President Claudine Gay’s “tiptoeing, equivocating” response to student groups’ statement calling “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” in Gaza.
“We are stunned and sickened at the dismal failure of Harvard’s leadership to take a clear and unequivocal stand against the barbaric murders of innocent Israeli civilians by terrorists,” the foundation said in a letter to university brass.
The Lever obtained internal records that included a list of 2023 benefactors and donor-only meetings which revealed Radvinsky and his wife Katie Chudnovsky were behind the lobby’s highest pledge of $11 million. (The porn tycoon denied this in an email to the news site, saying he didn’t pledge anything and “this appl[ies] to me / my foundation / my family.”)
The confidential documents also revealed AIPAC is using its funds to push against a ceasefire in Gaza, where the death toll of Palestinians killed in the Israel-Hamas war has reportedly topped 25,000. At least 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed in the Hamas attack.
At one Nov. 29 donor event, AIPAC CEO Howard Kohr was asked, “How do we encourage our members of Congress to stand up to some of the wildly inaccurate claims coming from the more pro-Hamas camp?” Kohr answered, in part: “We are going to have to continue to demonstrate in even more dramatic ways that if you’re willing to stand with Israel when she’s at war and she needs America… we’re willing to help [you] politically.”
Politicians who don’t agree, he added, must be “defeated at the ballot box.”
Other donors included Congressman David Trone, a Maryland Democrat running for Senate who pledged $100,000 to AIPAC, and Zumba co-founder Alberto Perlman, who promised the same amount. Daniel Sundheim of D1 Capital Partners guaranteed $2 million, while real estate tycoon Milton Cooper, Atlanta Hawks owner Tony Ressler, and Blackstone Group president Jonathan Gray each pledged $1 million.
