Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta declined to answer Wednesday if he had ever been told that Jeffrey Epstein was an intelligence asset during his handling of the 2008 child sex abuse case against the jet-setting financier.
Acosta, under fire for the non-prosecution agreement he’d made with Epstein’s attorneys and for the light 13-month jail stint that Epstein served more than a decade ago, told reporters at a press conference that he couldn’t answer questions about whether Epstein was allegedly tied to an intelligence agency in some way because he was prohibited from doing so due to Justice Department regulations.
“So, there has been reporting to that effect. And let me say, there’s been report to a lot of effects in this case. Not just now but over the years. And again, I would, I would hesitate to take this reporting as fact,” Acosta said.
“This was a case that was brought by our office. This was a case that was brought based on the facts,” said Acosta. “And I look at the reporting and others. I can’t address it directly because of our guidelines.”
During the press conference, Acosta corrected what he said were other misconceptions or misstatements about his handling of the case and dismissed much of the reporting on the Epstein case as “just going down rabbit holes.”
Acosta, the former U.S. attorney for Southern Florida, reached an agreement in 2008 with Epstein’s attorneys where Epstein was allowed to plead guilty to two state-level prostitution solicitation charges related to a 17-year-old girl. Epstein served just 13 months in a Palm Beach County jail, paid restitution to certain victims, and registered as a sex offender. The secret agreement was reportedly struck before investigators had even finished interviewing all the alleged victims, and it included protections for some of Epstein’s alleged co-conspirators.
The question about Epstein’s possible status as a potential intelligence asset was prompted by a report this week of comments from a few years ago by a former senior White House official who told the Daily Beast that Acosta said during interviews for the administration position he had been told during the 2008 case that Epstein “belonged to intelligence.”
Epstein faces new charges in the Southern District of New York, including allegedly “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls at his homes in Manhattan, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida, among other locations” between 2002 and 2005, according to a 14-page federal indictment. Epstein pleaded not guilty in federal court Monday. In a search of Epstein’s Manhattan mansion over the weekend, investigators say they also uncovered what appeared to large amounts of nude photographs, including some of underage girls.
Acosta defended his handling of the Epstein case Wednesday, claiming that “facts are important and facts are being overlooked” and that “these cases are complex especially when they involve children.”
“I feel very badly for Secretary Acosta, because I’ve known him as being somebody who works so hard and has done such a good job I feel very badly about that whole situation,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. “But we’re going to be looking at that and looking at it very closely.”
