The decision to rubber-stamp a sweetheart plea deal for Jeffrey Epstein in 2008 indelibly altered the course of Alex Acosta’s career.
The extraordinary agreement signed by Mr. Acosta, who was then U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, allowed Epstein to serve 13-months in a low-security prison for child prostitution.
While in Palm Beach County Jail, Epstein was permitted to leave for work release for as long as 12 hours a day, during which time he allegedly had “improper sexual contact” at his office.
Nine years after signing off on that deal, Mr. Acosta would be forced to resign from Donald Trump’s first cabinet when Epstein was indicted again on child sex trafficking charges and his “plea of the century” was thrust under renewed scrutiny.
The former U.S. Labor Secretary, 56, will be grilled by lawmakers on September 19 over the paltry punishment he signed off on for one of the world’s most notorious pedophiles after he was subpoenaed to appear before the House Oversight Committee.
Despite his office drawing up a 60 count indictment which ran to dozens of pages, Mr. Acosta approved an agreement which led to Epstein pleading guilty to only two child prostitution charges in a state court in 2008.
In a sign of the pedophile’s contempt for the law, while serving time he used an email with the handle “jeevacation”, court documents later revealed.
Epstein was armed with a “dream team” of highly paid lawyers, including Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor, and Ken Starr, who brought the impeachment case against former president Bill Clinton, and managed to dodge charges which could have put him away for life.
During the negotiations Mr. Acosta had an unusual one-on-one breakfast meeting at a hotel with one of Epstein’s defense lawyers, Jay Lefkowitz, a partner at Kirkland and Ellis, the law firm where Mr. Acosta was previously a partner.
Even more irregular was that the non prosecution agreement gave immunity to four co-conspirators who have been accused of playing central roles in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.
The deal did not mention Ghislaine Maxwell by name but her lawyers have repeatedly argued that it should cover her: a court in New York and an appeal court disagreed.
Years after the deal was inked, Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Acosta to his administration.
The son of Cuban immigrants, Mr. Acosta was the first Hispanic person chosen by Mr. Trump for a cabinet position.
That appointment was the impetus for Julie Brown, a Miami Herald journalist, to begin investigating Epstein in 2018.
Aggrieved that Mr. Acosta’s new role in the Trump administration gave him oversight of human trafficking, Ms. Brown published a series of investigative reports on the Epstein plea deal.
Her reporting, which characterized the Epstein agreement as a “deal of a lifetime”, led to the pedophile’s re-arrest and indictment the following year—and Mr. Acosta’s resignation.
While a Department of Justice review later found that Mr. Acosta’s conduct was not corrupt, it noted that he had exercised “poor judgement”.
The department’s office of professional responsibility said that the deal was signed before “significant investigative steps were completed” and said that the terms were “unusual and problematic”.
The most damning criticism regarded the failure by Mr. Acosta’s office to inform Epstein’s victims, as required under U.S. law about the terms of the deal.
That left them “uninformed” and “created the misimpression that the department intentionally sought to silence the victims”, the review found.
Shortly before leaving the cabinet in 2019, Mr. Acosta defended his actions in a press conference, claiming he was “trying to do the right thing for these victims”.
He insisted that the priority was getting Epstein to serve some time in jail and to register as a sex offender.
Mr. Acosta claimed that “facts are being overlooked” and that he had “proceeded appropriately”.
But it wasn’t enough to save him from being ousted by Mr. Trump, who said Mr. Acosta had “made a deal that people were happy with”, until “twelve years later they’re not happy with it.”
Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison for recruiting girls for Epstein, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider her case claiming the 2008 deal granted her immunity.
Since he left office, Mr. Acosta has largely stayed out of the public eye and served on a number of investment and pension company boards.
But he returned to the headlines in June when it emerged he had been appointed to the board of Newsmax, the right wing, pro-Trump TV network.
The following month, Greg Kelly, a Newsmax host, defended Mr. Acosta on his show and said the arrangement with Epstein “wasn’t a sweetheart deal”.
When he appears before Congress this month, Mr. Acosta will be trying to make the very same argument.
Daniel Bates is a New York–based freelance foreign correspondent. Susie Coen is a London-based investigative journalist
