Back in the early 2000s, Jeffrey Epstein and his famous friends were having a blast. Businessmen, politicians, celebrities, and even academics were caught up in the hedonism of Epstein's life. Epstein was a giver, who freely shared his lavish lifestyle with his pals. He flew friends to his island in St. Thomas, threw decadent dinner parties at his Manhattan townhouse, and spared no expense or indulgence. His friends included Leslie Wexner of The Limited, Kevin Spacey, Prince Andrew, a group of Nobel Prize winning scientists, and Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.
As it turned out, Epstein was living a double life. Between the years 1998 and 2007, Epstein ran a perverted pyramid scheme of sorts where he paid underage girls about $200 per session to perform daily sexual massages. The girls he hired told police that Epstein instructed them to get undressed and he would then penetrate them.
Epstein was arrested in Palm Beach County, Florida in 2008. That same year, Epstein quietly paid out settlements to a number of victims who claimed the financier molested them on several occasions. Surely, Epstein hoped that would be the end of it. However, the girls kept coming out of the woodwork with the same story, again and again. So, he did what the very wealthy and very famous do in situations like this. He hired a dream team of star attorneys to – pardon the pun – get him off. In Epstein's case, his team of Gerald Lefcourt and Alan Dershowitz managed to get him a deal for limited jail time despite more than a decade of alleged serial sexual abuse and rape of an unknown number of girls. In the end he was found guilty of abusing more than 80 women.
Photo via Palm Beach County Sheriff's Department/Wikimedia Creative Commons/Public Domain
Now, it is being reported that Labor Secretary R. Alexander Acosta reportedly helped Epstein cut a confidential non-prosecution agreement that shut down a federal investigation into a trans-Atlantic sex trafficking operation of underage girls.
The Miami Herald did an in-depth expose to uncover how Acosta – who was a prosecutor in Miami – made it possible for Epstein to face incredibly lenient charges and sentencing for sex-related crimes against minors. Epstein was:
"…accused of assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls with the help of young female recruiters to coerce into havingsex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion as often as three times a day, the town of Palm Beach Police found."
These crimes could have put Epstein in prison for the rest of his life. Instead, Acosta, who was the U.S. attorney handling the case, negotiated an extraordinary plea agreement that concealed the extent of Epstein's crimes and the sheer number of people involved. Acosta was personally involved in negotiating Epstein's non-prosecution agreement and he also allowed Epstein's attorneys a lot of leeway and freedom in dictating the terms of that agreement.
The agreement that emerged from that case had Epstein charged with a single count of soliciting a minor. He was sentenced to 18 months in a Palm Beach jail. During that time, he was allowed to leave six days a week for "work release." He served 13 months of his sentence. He has been a free man, albeit with the tag of sex offender tied to him for life, since 2009. The agreement also basically shot down an ongoing FBI investigation into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein's sex crimes. Epstein and the women he hired to lure minors to his mansion for sex parties received immunity from prosecution.
The fact is that Acosta seemed to go to great lengths to grant the wishes of Epstein's legal team. Acosta explained his lenient handling of Epstein's case in 2011. He said that he was heavily pressured by Epstein's hard hitting legal team of Jay Lefkowitz, Alan Dershowitz, Roy Black, Kenneth Starr, Jack Goldberger, Gerald Lefcourt, and former U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis.
Epstein also likely benefited from having influential friends including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. When it was revealed that Bill Clinton was a fairly frequent passenger on Epstein's private jet – flying at least 26 times from 2001 to 2003 according to the flight logs – everyone expected Donald Trump to run with that news.
Except that during the presidential campaign, a woman filed a lawsuit alleging that both Epstein and Donald Trump repeatedly raped her at a series of sex parties. The woman says she attended several parties at Epstein's mansion, and had sexual contact with Donald Trump at four of them. The fourth and final time she attended a party with Trump, she alleges he tied her to a bed, raped her, then beat her and threatened to kill her and her family if she told a soul. She was 13 years old at the time.
The Clintons have not addressed their affiliation with Epstein. Trump has denied the claims against him and said he barely knew Epstein, however a quick search of New York media in the 90s will show you his comings-and-goings at Epstein's Upper East Side home – but denial is what one does in these cases, right?
Acosta's duties as labor secretary include overseeing human trafficking and international child labor laws.
