Sez she was attacked in massage room at age 15; demands ID of sicko’s helper
Woman
Embattled Labor Secretary Alex Acosta insisted Wednesday he did the best he could when he cut a backroom deal with Jeffrey Epstein that allowed the pervy New York billionaire to serve just 13 months in jail despite allegations he molested scores of teenage girls.
Facing mounting calls from Democrats for his resignation, Acosta was unapologetic during a press conference at Labor Department headquarters, defending the 2008 non-prosecution deal he negotiated with Epstein while serving as a U.S. attorney in Miami. Instead, he blamed state prosecutors who handled the case before him.
“The Palm Beach state attorney’s office was ready to let Epstein walk free, no jail time, nothing,” Acosta said. “We did what we did because we wanted to see Epstein go to jail.”
Acosta (inset) added, “That was the focus. Facts are important and facts are being overlooked.”
But Acosta overlooked a few facts himself.
He skirted around the fact that he didn’t notify Epstein’s alleged victims of the behind-the-scenes agreement and didn’t want to say whether he wishes he would have done things differently. Instead, Acosta kept putting blame on Florida state prosecutors.
“There is a value to a short guilty plea because letting him walk, letting what the state attorney was ready to do go forward, would have been absolutely awful.” Acosta said.
The labor secretary’s handling of the Epstein case has come under intense scrutiny since federal prosecutors in New York charged the ultra-wealthy hedge fund manager on Monday with sex trafficking, claiming he paid off dozens of girls to molest and abuse them in the early 2000s at his luxe Upper East Side mansion and property in Palm Beach, Fla.
Epstein, who has been held at a lower Manhattan jail since his Saturday arrest, pleaded not guilty to the charges, which could land him in prison for the rest of his life.
The new charges relate to much of the same alleged conduct that Epstein avoided prosecution on in 2008.
Acosta’s office allowed Epstein to not be prosecuted on those federal counts in exchange for pleading guilty to two lesser state prostitution charges. He had to register as a sex offender and was sentenced to 13 months in a workrelease program that allowed him to be out of jail 12 hours a day, six days a week for the duration of his sentence.
Speaking at the Labor Department, Acosta said his office agreed to the deal because they feared Epstein and his star-studded legal team would’ve won in court. A Queens woman who says she was raped by Jeffrey Epstein when she was 15 sued the billionaire perv Wednesday, seeking to discover the identity of the recruiter she says lured her into his Upper East Side mansion.
Jennifer Araoz, 32, detailed her suit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court in an appearance on NBC’s “Today.” Araoz says that in 2001 the brunette “recruiter,” who appeared to be in her 20s, approached as she left Talent Unlimited High School.
Epstein, who lived only blocks away on E. 71st St., knew people in the acting and modeling world, the recruiter told her, according to Araoz. She hoped to pursue a career in fashion or Hollywood and had recently lost her father to AIDS, making her particularly vulnerable to Epstein’s abuse, the suit says.
“You have to see his house,” the recruiter said, according to the suit.
Epstein is “very caring, very wealthy, very successful, and someone good to know,” the recruiter told Araoz, she claims in court papers.
The suit, which seeks to force Epstein to reveal the identity of the recruiter, was filed in anticipation of a second suit that Araoz will file next month under New York’s Child Victims Act, her attorney Dan Kaiser said. She has not yet spoken to federal investigators, Kaiser added.
The suit describes a pattern of sexual abuse beginning with nude massages that is similar to the federal sex trafficking charges brought against Epstein on Monday. Prosecutors say Epstein abused dozens of girls as young as 14 between 2002 and 2005 in his seven-story mansion. Epstein has pleaded not guilty.
The registered sex offender’s alleged abuse of Araoz culminated with him raping her while he laid on a massage table, according to her suit.
“I was terrified and telling him to stop,” Araoz said on “Today.”
“He had no intentions of stopping.