Les Wexner, the Epstein files, and Columbus’ donation scramble
As scrutiny around Les Wexner’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein flares again, Ohio officials are donating past campaign money to nonprofits. But is that accountability—or just election-year optics?
Columbus is doing that thing cities do when the vibes get toxic: everybody starts fumbling for the nearest bottle of hand sanitizer and pretending nobody touched the doorknob.
The doorknob, in this case, is Les Wexner—the billionaire retail kingmaker whose name is on half the city and whose proximity to Jeffrey Epstein has never been a secret, but is suddenly being treated like breaking news now that new batches of Epstein-related records are out and Wexner is headed toward a congressional deposition.
So now a bunch of elected officials are announcing they’re donating Wexner campaign contributions to local nonprofits. Rep. Joyce Beatty says she’s donating Wexner money to organizations supporting survivors of sex trafficking and abuse. Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin says he donated the “total sum” to Columbus Promise. Franklin County Commissioner John O’Grady donated to Ours Brothers Keepers.
And then there’s Mayor Andrew Ginther, who—according to The Columbus Dispatch—isn’t giving his Wexner donations away. The local outlet The Rooster also reports Ginther told reporters nobody asked him to return the money, and he brushed off concerns about Wexner’s Epstein ties.
Which brings us to the real question: Is donating the money away accountability… or is it just reputation management with a receipt?
We track the influence chain—who pays, who benefits, who dodges, and how “accountability” gets staged for cameras. Join the #KinFam for more like this.
Here’s what was really happening: “Return the money” is the cheapest form of morality
Donating Wexner money to charity sounds like a righteous cleanse. It photographs well. It reads well in a press release. It lets you say “I stand with survivors” without doing anything that might upset the donor ecosystem that keeps local politics humming.
But functionally? It doesn’t rewind time. It doesn’t erase the access the donation bought. It doesn’t undo the advantage that money gave when it was sitting in the account—paying for mailers, staff time, event space, field operations, or just plain political security.
It’s like saying, “I cashed the check, but don’t worry—I gave the same amount to charity later.” That’s not repentance. That’s laundering the optics.
And the timing isn’t subtle. Wexner is back in headlines because (1) his name appeared among newly unredacted Epstein-related material and was discussed publicly by members of Congress, and (2) the House Oversight Committee is moving forward with a deposition. The pressure got louder, so the politicians got holier.
Key moments in the Wexner “donate it away” scramble
1) The Epstein files get louder—and Wexner gets pulled back into the frame
Wexner hasn’t been charged with a crime, and his representatives have denied wrongdoing and said he was not a target in 2019.
At the same time, reporting around the latest document releases has put his name back into public view—including references to an FBI document that listed him as a “co-conspirator,” while also noting limited evidence. That’s not a conviction. But it’s also not nothing—especially in a country that routinely treats suspicion like smoke and “smoke” like fire when the person isn’t rich.
2) Beatty moves first—because her math is ugly
Beatty says she’s donating Wexner money to survivor-support organizations. WOSU reports she has received $61,100 from Les and Abigail Wexner since 2013. That’s enough money to become a story all by itself, especially when your district includes Columbus and your political brand has to survive the phrase “Epstein associate” in the same paragraph as “campaign contributions.”
3) Hardin and O’Grady discover charity—right on schedule
Per The Rooster, O’Grady donated to Ours Brothers Keepers; Hardin donated to Columbus Promise. Whether you love those choices or side-eye them, the logic is the same: announce a donation, exit the blast radius.
And yes, it conveniently overlaps with the unspoken local reality: Columbus political succession is always loading in the background. (Hardin, Klein, and Ginther are basically in a long-running “who’s next” chess match.)
4) Ginther doesn’t budge—and that’s why he’s the headline
If you’re the mayor and everybody around you is sprinting toward the moral high ground, standing still reads like defiance.
Even if Ginther’s internal logic is “the donations were legal,” politics is not a courtroom. Politics is vibes plus power. And right now, the vibe is: why are you the last person still holding the bag?
So what? What donating the money away actually changes
It changes three things—none of them are the big one.
It reduces future dependency.
If Wexner money is still sitting in a campaign account, donating an equivalent amount to charity can at least stop it from funding future political activity.It’s a signal—mostly to donors and endorsers.
This is a way of saying: “I’m safe. I won’t let this become a liability for the coalition.”It’s narrative control.
It flips the story from “why did you take it?” to “look what I did with it.” That’s not accountability. That’s PR.
What it doesn’t do: it doesn’t address the deeper issue—a local power structure that treated Wexner money as normal, acceptable, and not worth explaining until national scrutiny forced everybody’s hand.
Is this just because it’s an election year?
Mostly, yes.
Not because every politician is cartoon-villain evil, but because election years are when:
opponents go digging,
reporters have incentives to connect dots,
donors get skittish,
and “values” suddenly become a campaign asset again.
Also: the congressional deposition date puts a clock on the story. Every week closer to it increases the chance new details drop, and nobody wants to be caught flat-footed with a quote like “no comment” while the internet does what the internet does.
Will Wexner’s name start coming off buildings?
That process has already started—at least politically and culturally—even if the signs haven’t changed yet.
Survivors of OSU’s Richard Strauss abuse have been publicly pressuring Ohio State leadership around Wexner’s institutional influence, including calls to remove his name from facilities. Ohio State has denied at least one formal request to remove Wexner’s name from the Woody Hayes Athletic Center complex. And OSU’s president has publicly acknowledged paying attention to the latest Epstein-file reporting while also saying there’s “no reason not to believe” Wexner’s denials.
Translation: the university is bracing, not pivoting.
Name removals happen when two things converge:
sustained public pressure (not just a one-week flare-up), and
institutional stakeholders deciding the reputational cost exceeds the financial/history cost.
The pressure side is rising. The institutional side? Still in “wait it out” mode.
What could break this? (Failure modes)
The deposition is a dud.
If the congressional deposition yields no new, headline-worthy information, the urgency fades, and everybody’s “donation cleanse” becomes the closing chapter.The story gets localized into petty politics.
If this turns into “Hardin vs. Ginther” personality content, the structural question—who runs Columbus, and how—gets buried.Nonprofits become props.
If donations look like opportunistic checks without transparency, the nonprofits get used as moral shields and the public gets even more cynical.
What to watch next (signals)
Does Ginther eventually donate—or double down?
A late donation would scream “I resisted until it hurt.”Do other city/county officials disclose totals and timelines?
“Donated to charity” is not a number. Watch for specifics.Do institutions move on naming decisions—or stall again?
OSU’s current posture is “no.” Watch if that changes as pressure escalates.Does the deposition produce new documentation?
Even one new detail can re-ignite the whole cycle.Do journalists keep pulling the thread locally?
Because Columbus has lived with Wexner’s influence for decades. The real story is what people accepted before the national spotlight arrived.
The honest bottom line: donating the money away is not accountability. It’s harm reduction—for the politician. Real accountability would be (a) rejecting the money going forward, (b) disclosing totals cleanly, (c) explaining the relationship and access patterns, and (d) supporting structural reforms that make it harder for a single billionaire to become an unofficial branch of local government.
Until then, “I gave it to charity” is just the political version of “my bad.” Cute. Not sufficient.
We don’t just report the headline—we map the power, the incentives, and the cover stories that keep it all running.
SOURCING / TRANSPARENCY FOOTER (sources used)
WOSU Public Media — “U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty will donate campaign money from Leslie Wexner to charity” — Feb. 13, 2026
ABC6 / WSYX — “Ohio politicians scramble to return campaign donations tied to Wexner” — Feb. 16, 2026
Reuters — “US congressional panel to subpoena billionaire Leslie Wexner over Epstein ties” — Jan. 8, 2026
NOTUS — “Ohio Lawmakers Stay Mum on Donations From Epstein Associate Les Wexner” — Feb. 10, 2026
Ohio Revised Code — Section 3517.08 (charitable donation expenditures) — effective Sept. 30, 2025
Federal Election Commission — “Charitable donations” guidance
The Rooster (D.J. Byrnes) — “Shannon Hardin & Joyce Beatty return Leslie Wexner’s dirty money” — Feb. 13, 2026
The Rooster (D.J. Byrnes) — “Ohio State University still honors notorious Jeffrey Epstein associate Les Wexner” — Dec. 18, 2025