Epstein trial would have been ‘crapshoot’, plea-deal prosecutor tells Congress | Jeffrey Epstein

Alex Acosta, the former U.S. attorney for the southern district of Florida who struck a plea deal with Jeffrey Epstein in 2008, testified before the House oversight committee last month that it would be “nonsense” to go to trial because of the victims’ lack of cooperation.

One transcript In the six-hour interview released Friday, Acosta, who later served as labor secretary in the first Trump administration, described the evidentiary hurdles a federal investigation into Esptein might face and explained why his office turned the case over to Florida state prosecutors.

“In the end, the trial was a complete fiasco and we just wanted the guy to go to jail,” Acosta told members of the board of supervisors.

Questions about the government’s non-prosecution agreement with Epstein have hung heavily over the scandal, leading to speculation that larger forces were at work.

Acosta said the government’s prosecution team’s opinion was that “jailing a billionaire sends a strong signal to society that this is unacceptable, this is not right, this cannot happen.”

Acosta added that Epstein’s registration as a sex offender as part of the non-prosecution agreement “came to the world’s attention.” “We can put it aside whether the world is listening or not, but it’s announcing to the world that he is a criminal and a sex offender.”

Acosta said that if the 14-count federal case goes to trial and the government loses, “it shows that he got away with it, that you can do more of it. And we thought it was very, very important to send that signal, and so that’s part of the reason why we preferred the negotiated plea.”

Acosta said the Palm Beach state attorney’s office tried to encourage at least three victims to testify before the state grand jury, but only one showed up. Acosta said federal prosecutors are not confident they can successfully prosecute Epstein because of inconsistencies in some victims’ statements.

“Many victims refused to testify. Many victims’ stories were changing. We all understood why their stories changed, but they did. And the defense attorney…cross-examination would have been debilitating,” he explained.

“A lot of them had troubles in their pasts. They had MySpace pages, they had histories that could be used against them by defense attorneys. And this was, in all honesty, a time when the defense could be much, much tougher on victims on the stand.”

But in striking a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein — which Maxwell later tried to use as the basis for an appeal of his 2021 sex trafficking conviction, which was rejected by the high court earlier this month — Acosta said prosecutors expected Florida authorities to ensure that Epstein serves his entire 13-month sentence in prison.

“We had assurances that he would be kept in permanent custody,” Acosta said. Later in the interview, he added: “If we had known he was going to take a work permit, this wouldn’t have happened.”

But Acosta denied that Donald Trump, who was a friend of Epstein’s until they had a falling out over a real estate deal and Epstein’s attempt to hire staff from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago business, was consulted on the matter. “He moved in circles that I didn’t go into,” he said.

The transcript disclosure came on the same day that Prince Andrew agreed to give up his royal title, Duke of York, and other honors after it emerged that he had maintained a friendship with Epstein after he said in a 2019 TV interview that his friendship with him was over.

The new release also comes just days before the posthumous release of a memoir by Virginia Giuffre, who claims she was trafficked to Andrew three times when she was 17 by Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.

In an interview with the oversight committee, Acosta stated that Epstein’s defense team, which included constitutional lawyer Alan Dershowitz and former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, came close to acting unethically.

“Everyone has the right to aggressive defense,” Acosta said. “I don’t think the line was crossed. I don’t think there was misconduct… but it was unpleasant. It let our lawyers down.”

Earlier, Robert Garcia, a Democrat on the oversight committee, was released a letter He called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to end her efforts to obstruct the panel’s investigation into Epstein.

Garcia alleged that Bondi refused to comply with a congressional subpoena to release the full Epstein files or cooperate with his investigation into a “corrupt collusion between the DOJ and Ghislaine Maxwell.”

Garcia said the “continued refusal” to provide information to the committee “shows the Trump administration’s disdain to provide transparency to the American people about Epstein’s crimes.”