Acosta defends Epstein plea deal
WASHINGTON — Labor Secretary Alex Acosta on Wednesday defended his handling of the sex crimes prosecution of financier Jeffrey Epstein in Florida more than a decade ago, bucking a growing chorus of Democratic resignation calls while effectively making the case to President Donald Trump to keep his job.
At a televised news conference watched intently in the White House, Acosta offered a clinical explanation of the 2008 plea deal, arguing that he overrode state authorities to ensure Epstein would face jail time and that holding out for a stiffer sentence by going to trial would have been “a roll of the dice.”
“I wanted to help them,” Acosta, who was the top federal prosecutor in Miami at the time, said of the victims during an hourlong session with reporters at the Labor Department. “That is why we intervened.
And that’s what the prosecutors of my office did — they insisted that he go to jail and put the world on notice that he was and is a sexual predator.”
His comments did little to quell the furor over the deal, which has come under renewed scrutiny since Epstein was charged Monday in New York with running a sex-trafficking operation that lured dozens of girls, some as young as 14, to his Manhattan home and to a mansion in Palm Beach, Fla. Lawyers for some of the victims and the former Palm Beach prosecutor accused Acosta of rewriting history.
While condemning Epstein’s “horrific” crimes, Acosta offered no apologies nor did he channel the visceral outrage felt by many critics. Instead, he offered a measured, nuanced defense — unusual for an administration in which attack-the-attacker bombast is more common — while suggesting that times had changed in a way that made his compromise a decade ago look different.
“Today we know a lot more about how victims’ trauma impacts their testimony,” he said. “Our juries are more accepting of contradictory statements, understand that memories work differently. And today our judges do not allow victim-shaming by defense attorneys.”
For Acosta, the real question was how his defense would go over with the president, who urged him to publicly explain his decisions as a prosecutor. Trump was assured by aides that Acosta did well during his news conference, and the president did not immediately signal disagreement, advisers said. But the case is uncomfortable for Trump, who at one point in the past socialized with Epstein, a fellow denizen of wealthy circles in Palm Beach and Manhattan.
The White House made no official statement, and Trump’s Twitter account remained silent on the matter in the hours after the news conference.
Acosta expressed confidence that he still had Trump’s backing and rejected reports that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, had suggested he be forced out. “My relationship with the president is outstanding,” he said. “He has very publicly made clear that I’ve got his support.”
The political drama played out as another woman came forward to accuse Epstein of sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager. The woman, Jennifer Araoz, who had not previously been identified as a victim, told NBC News that she was approached outside her Upper East Side high school in 2001, when she was 14, by a woman who then took her to Epstein’s Manhattan home.
Over the next year, she said, she was enticed to give Epstein massages in her underwear while he masturbated. Eventually, she said, he raped her when she was 15.
“He raped me — forcefully raped me,” Araoz said. “He knew exactly what he was doing.”
Her lawyer, Kimberly Lerner, said Araoz had not talked to federal prosecutors and was not one of the women included in the indictment.
The charges filed against Epstein on Monday, along with the reported discovery of hundreds of nude images of young women or girls at his New York residence, have created an angry public debate over Acosta’s role in the original plea deal.
Acosta was serving as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida when he brokered the agreement that resulted in Epstein pleading guilty in state court and serving 13 months in jail without facing federal charges after being accused of sexually abusing dozens of young women and girls.
Acosta said he intervened in the case because state authorities were pursuing a single charge that would not have resulted in Epstein being jailed or having to register as a sex offender. “Simply put, the Palm Beach state attorney’s office was willing to let Epstein walk free, no jail time, nothing,” Acosta said.
But he said he chose not to go to trial because victims were “scared and traumatized,” and in some cases refusing to testify and in others even exonerating Epstein. “How do you weigh those two if going to trial is viewed as a roll of the dice?” he said. “The goal here was straightforward: Put Epstein behind bars, ensure that he registers as a sexual offender.”
Barry Krischer, who at the time served as Palm Beach state attorney, responded to Acosta’s news conference Wednesday with a scathing rebuke, accusing the labor secretary of trying to “rewrite history” by blaming state authorities.
“I can emphatically state that Mr. Acosta’s recollection of this matter is completely wrong,” Krischer said.
He said a grand jury heard all of the evidence available at the time and returned a single count of felony solicitation of prostitution, but Acosta’s office later abandoned its own 53-page indictment after secret negotiations with Epstein’s lawyers.
“No matter how my office resolved the state charges, the U.S. attorney’s office always had the ability to file its own federal charges,” Krischer said. “If Mr. Acosta was truly concerned with the state’s case and felt he had to rescue the matter, he would have moved forward with the 53-page indictment that his own office drafted.”
A federal judge ruled in February that the agreement brokered by Acosta violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act by not notifying Epstein’s victims until later.
Acosta said Wednesday that his office delayed telling victims because it was not sure Epstein would go through with the agreement, which included a provision allowing victims to seek financial restitution. If Epstein had gone to trial rather than pleading guilty, Acosta said, defense lawyers could have undercut the credibility of the victims by suggesting they were only in it for the money.
Asked if he had any regrets, Acosta said, “Look, no regrets is a very hard question. You always look back and you say, ‘What if ?’ ” He added: “We did what we did because we wanted to see Epstein go to jail. He needed to go to jail. He needed to go to jail. And that was the focus.”
Lawyers for some of the victims sharply disputed Acosta’s account Wednesday.
“Unbelievable,” said Spencer Kuvin, a lawyer who represented three of the women. “Ignoring the facts of what actually occurred 12 years ago. Doing his best to put a good light on a bad deal.”
Adam Horowitz, a lawyer who represented seven of the victims, said Acosta’s arguments were disingenuous. He acknowledged that the young women were scared to testify, but said that that was because prosecutors had terrified them.
“The prosecutors were saying, ‘These defense lawyers are going to go through your whole personal life, dig up your bad acts and your sex life,’ ” Horowitz said. “When they heard that from prosecutors, sure they were intimidated. They kept saying, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ ”