President Trump’s Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta is facing calls for his resignation once again for his past ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire charged with multiple counts of sex trafficking and abuse.
Acosta’s connection to the Epstein case has been well known. He was one of several Florida prosecutors who offered Epstein a sweetheart plea deal more than a decade ago, allowing the registered sex offender to skate with minimal consequences. And while Epstein enjoyed the privileges of this deal, hopping from mansion to mansion in his private jet, his alleged crimes faded into the background. They would have remained there had it not been for a handful of diligent reporters with the Miami Herald.
A federal judge even ruled in February that Miami prosecutors, led by then-U.S. Attorney Acosta, broke the law when they arranged the plea deal, due to its deliberate exclusion of Epstein’s victims. The deal was kept secret and Epstein walked away, buying several of his victims’ silence with hefty settlements while the rest were denied the opportunity to speak against him in a court of law.
Deals like these are not uncommon. In fact, they’re standard. The vast majority of criminal cases end with plea bargains — about 94% at the state level and 97% at the federal level. But what is unusual about Acosta’s deal is that it all but ignored the severity of the accusations against Epstein. Girls as young as 13 years old had accused him of molesting and soliciting them for sex. Prosecutors knew this, but the opportunity to settle the case quickly and quietly outweighed their desire to see justice served.
Then again, Acosta himself said he believed this deal was the best guarantee of justice, one way or the other. At his 2017 confirmation hearing, Acosta told Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., “At the end of the day, based on the evidence, professionals within the prosecutor’s office decide that a plea that guarantees that someone goes to jail, that guarantees that someone register generally, and that guarantees other outcomes, is a good thing.” In reality, Epstein served only 13 months in the private wing of the Palm Beach County jail, where he was able to come and go as he liked for up to 12 hours at a time, six days a week.
Perhaps one of the only good things to come from Epstein’s case is the exposure of inappropriate or fraudulent plea deals in the justice system that let accused criminals walk away from a trial, and force others to plead guilty without a chance to claim innocence. Plea bargains guarantee efficiency: costly, time-consuming trials are avoided more often than not. But at what cost? The swift finality of plea deals like Epstein’s might make the legal system’s machinery run smoothly, but society suffers as a result. Our society must be just, and there can be no lasting justice under a system that prioritizes efficiency at the expense of objectivity.
If anything, Acosta is a symptom of a justice system that is broken and rotting from within. He is not responsible for Epstein’s crimes, but he did facilitate a deal that resulted in a total lapse of accountability. President Trump must decide if this past failure requires Acosta’s resignation. And we must decide what to do about a criminal justice system that let a monster walk free.
