LOS ANGELES (CA)
Ms Magazine
July 9, 2019
by Greta Baxter
Jeffrey Epstein has been dominating the headlines this week after the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York arrested him on charges of child sex trafficking—but over a decade ago, the billionaire was accused, with overwhelming evidence, of similar crimes, and then-prosecutor Alexander Acosta pioneered a lenient plea deal that ended the case.
Acosta is now Secretary of Labor—and he’s facing calls from lawmakers and advocates to step down in the wake of the latest charges against Epstein.
Acosta’s original plea deal for Epstein was negotiated in 2008 without the knowledge of the survivors, illegally keeping them out of the prosecution process. Epstein ultimately served just 13 months in prison, in the private wing of the Palm Beach County jail, with access to amenities including the use of his private jet. In February, a federal judge ruled that prosecutors broke the law when arranging that plea deal.
Acosta, who was named Labor Secretary in 2017, is not the only member of the Trump administration with ties to Epstein. The president himself has praised the financier in the past, even noting that Epstein “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
“Epstein plays by the same rule book as Donald Trump, Les Moonves, Harvey Weinstein, Eric Schneiderman and other powerful men who have been revealed as serial abusers of women,” NOW President Toni Van Pelt said in December. “Epstein’s scant 13-month stay in a county jail—where he was even allowed to spend twelve hours a day, six days a week, at his office, was made possible by a culture of powerful men, enabling each other, while dismissing, excusing or demeaning the women and children they brutalize with physical and sexual violence.”
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