From Victoria's Secret to Prince Andrew: Jeffrey Epstein connections just keep derailing the careers of billionaires, royals, and the like. Here's the full list.
1. President Donald Trump's labor secretary, Alex Acosta, stepped down amid backlash over a secret plea deal he orchestrated for Epstein in 2007.
Days after Epstein was arrested in July, Acosta began to face widespread calls to resign over the plea deal he orchestrated for the financier Jeffrey Epstein during his time as US attorney in Miami, Business Insider reported. Despite allegations that Epstein abused more than 30 underage girls, the financier was required to register as a sex offender and spent 13 months in jail. Epstein was allowed to leave the jail 12 hours a day, six days a week, for work release while serving his sentence.
"I thought the right thing was to step aside," Acosta told reporters, according to Bloomberg.
2. Netflix and FX severed their ties with film publicist Peggy Siegal in July after it was revealed that she got Epstein into A-list events in New York.
In a statement provided to Business Insider in July, Siegal said:
"I believe I met Jeffrey Epstein sometime in 2005, and we became social friends as he was somewhat of a film buff who wanted to come to film screenings ... I did not know at the time — and did not learn until recently — that he had been abusing underage girls. When Jeffrey returned from Palm Beach and his time in jail, I understood that he had spent time in jail for soliciting a prostitute, and he assured me that he had changed his ways. I did not believe that the charges were very serious because I knew he was allowed to work from his office every day ... I am horrified as each of these women come forward and the accusations mount. I am deeply embarrassed by my relationship with him and that I allowed him to use me."Before her relationship with Epstein was revealed, Siegal was a prominent New York publicist who has organized promotional screenings for films including "The Big Short," "Argo," and "The Revenant," Business Insider reported. Since then, she has only hosted one event, according to Vanity Fair.
Siegal complained about the uneven consequences for associating with Epstein in a January interview with Vanity Fair. "The men are fine," Siegal said. "They're moving on with their billions, and their jets, and their families, and their businesses. It's — it's a little — it's just odd that a single woman who's done nothing but kill herself for filmmakers has had to suffer like this. It's completely unfair."
3. MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito resigned in September after the New Yorker reported he quietly worked with Epstein to secure anonymous donations.
Ito worked with other directors and staff at the MIT Media Lab to quietly receive large anonymous donations from Epstein after Epstein was convicted of soliciting underage girls for prostitution, The New Yorker's Ronan Farrow reported.
Ito announced his resignation in an email to MIT's president and provost the next day, Business Insider reported. Ito also stepped down from roles at The New York Times Company, The MacArthur Foundation, and the Knight Foundation.
4. Britain's Prince Andrew announced that he would "step back from public duties for the foreseeable future" in November, because his "former association with Jeffrey Epstein has become a major disruption" to the royal family's work.
The Duke of York's announcement came days after he gave an interview the BBC on his relationship with Epstein that was widely seen as disastrous, Insider reported.
Prince Andrew was widely criticized for not expressing sympathy for the alleged victims of Epstein's sex-trafficking and for trivializing Epstein's crimes by calling them "unbecoming" conduct; he also offered questionable alibis in an attempt to "prove" he never had sex with a victim who accused him and pledged to participate in the American authority's investigations of Epstein. But Geoff Berman, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has since said that the prince did not respond to repeated requests to do so, Business Insider reported.
Prince Andrew told the BBC that his friendship Epstein brought him "opportunities," and that his slowness in ditching Epstein as a friend was because of his tendency to be "too honorable."
5. Billionaire financier Glenn Dubin retired following reports that his family was close with Epstein.
Dubin wrote that the transition was preplanned and unrelated to Epstein in a memo to staff, The New York Post reported. According to Dubin, his retirement was part of a larger plan to allow his business partner to take a more aggressive investment approach. Dubin told Reuters that his retirement had nothing to do with media reports of his relationship with Epstein, which he called "false."
Dubin and his wife Eva Andersson Dubin were longtime friends of Epstein's, and Epstein even told others that he considered marrying the couple's 24-year-old daughter Celina Dubin, Business Insider's Meghan Morris and Becky Peterson reported in December. Andersson Dubin once dated Epstein, but Morris and Peterson found no indication that Epstein ever had a romantic relationship with Celina Dubin.
6. Les Wexner is reportedly considering retiring from L Brands or selling Victoria's Secret amid both fury over his connection to Epstein and the company's plummeting sales.
Epstein became a trusted confidant of Wexner's while Epstein managed the CEO's fortune, according to Vanity Fair. The magazine reported that Wexner allowed Epstein to take an active role in L Brands, which owns Bath & Body Works and Express in addition to Victoria's Secret.
In 1989, Wexner used a trust to buy an Upper East Side townhouse that is believed to be the largest private residence in Manhattan for $13.2 million, Vanity Fair reported. Epstein moved in after Wexner and his wife, Abigail Koppel, moved to Ohio in 1996. Wexner's trust transferred ownership of the house to Epstein in 2011 for $0, Bloomberg reported.
Wexner later fired Epstein as his money manager. "Mr. Wexner severed ties with Mr. Epstein more than a decade ago," an L Brands spokesperson told Forbes in July.
Wexner's ties to Epstein are not the lingerie retailer's only problem, however. L Brands shares declined 29% in the bull market of 2019, and its market cap shrunk from $29 billion in 2015 to about $5.7 billion today.
The stock of L Brands shot up on the news of the possible sale.
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