By Michelle Goldberg, Opinion Columnist, Dec.3, 2018<\/p>\n
The cabinet official\u2019s connection to a shady deal for an alleged child molester.<\/em><\/p>\n It is the perverse good fortune of Alexander Acosta, Donald Trump\u2019s secretary of labor, to be part of an administration so spectacularly corrupt that it\u2019s simply impossible to give all its scandals the attention they deserve.<\/p>\n Last Wednesday, The Miami Herald published a blockbuster multipart expos\u00e9 about how the justice system failed the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, a rich, politically connected financier who appears to have abused underage girls on a near-industrial scale. The investigation, more than a year in the making, described Epstein as running a sort of child molestation pyramid scheme, in which girls \u2014 some in middle school \u2014 would be recruited to give Epstein \u201cmassages\u201d at his Palm Beach mansion, pressured into sex acts, then coerced into bringing him yet more girls. The Herald reported that Epstein was also suspected of trafficking girls from overseas.<\/p>\n What\u2019s shocking is not just the lurid details and human devastation of his alleged crimes, but the way he was able to use his money to escape serious consequences, thanks in part to Acosta, then Miami\u2019s top federal prosecutor. For reasons that are not entirely clear, Acosta took extraordinary measures to let Epstein \u2014 and, crucially, other unnamed people \u2014 off the hook.<\/p>\n The labor secretary, whose purview includes combating human trafficking<\/a>, has done nothing so far to rebut The Herald\u2019s reporting. (A spokesman for his department has referred reporters to his previous statements about the case.) It should end his career. The story might have been overshadowed by last week\u2019s cascading revelations in the Trump-Russia scandal, or the news that acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker knew of numerous fraud complaints<\/a> against a company he advised, to take just two examples of administration lawlessness. But while Acosta\u2019s record covering up for a depraved plutocrat makes him a good fit for the Trump administration, it should disqualify him from public service.<\/p>\n As Herald journalist Julie K. Brown reported, in 2007, Epstein was facing a federal indictment that could have put him away for the rest of his life. In a deal with one of Epstein\u2019s attorneys, however, Acosta, a rising star in Republican circles, short-circuited the federal investigation, letting Epstein plead guilty to two felony prostitution charges in state court. \u201cNot only would Epstein serve just 13 months in the county jail, but the deal \u2014 called a non-prosecution agreement \u2014 essentially shut down an ongoing F.B.I. probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein\u2019s sex crimes,\u201d wrote Brown<\/a>. It was, she wrote, \u201cone of the most lenient deals for a serial child sex offender in history.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite Florida\u2019s strict sex offender laws, Epstein was given <\/a>work-release to spend up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, in his Palm Beach office. Housed in a private wing of Palm Beach County jail, he hired his own security guards. During a subsequent year of probation, he was nominally under house arrest, but permitted to take his private jet on trips to Manhattan and the U.S. Virgin Islands.<\/p>\n Prosecutors seem to have deliberately kept the details of the settlement from Epstein\u2019s victims. Two of them are suing to overturn Epstein\u2019s plea, arguing that it violated the federal Crime Victims\u2019 Rights Act, which requires prosecutors to notify victims of plea negotiations and sentencing. (Some of Epstein\u2019s victims are expected in court for another lawsuit arising from the case, which begins Tuesday.)<\/p>\n Acosta\u2019s motives for going easy on Epstein are hard to discern. Before his stint in Miami, he headed the Justice Department\u2019s Civil Rights Division in George W. Bush\u2019s White House, where he was known for his concern about sex trafficking<\/a>. Yet with Epstein, Brown wrote, documents show that \u201cAcosta not only buckled under pressure from Epstein\u2019s lawyers, but he and other prosecutors worked with them to contain the case.\u201d Why?<\/p>\n We don\u2019t know, but one of Epstein\u2019s victims, Virginia Roberts, told The Herald that Epstein didn\u2019t just abuse her himself, he also \u201clent\u201d her out to \u201cpoliticians and academics and royalty.\u201d She claimed in a 2015 affidavit that she\u2019d had sex with both Prince Andrew of Britain \u2014 she included a photograph of them together \u2014 and with one of Epstein\u2019s attorneys, Alan Dershowitz, now best known for his public defenses of Trump. (Dershowitz has said Roberts lied to try to extract money from wealthy men. In 2015, a federal judge, Kenneth A. Marra, struck the allegations from the court record; attorneys for Roberts called the filing a \u201ctactical mistake\u201d and withdrew the allegations.)<\/p>\n Had the federal case gone forward, it could have shed an embarrassing spotlight on Epstein\u2019s many famous associates, including Bill Clinton, a frequent passenger on Epstein\u2019s private plane, nicknamed the \u201cLolita Express.\u201d<\/p>\n