Acosta told Congress that prosecuting Jeffrey Epstein would have been a 'crapshoot'

Julie K Brown, Miami Herald on Oct 17, 2025

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Alexander Acosta, Donald Trump’s former labor secretary who resigned in 2019 over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, told the House Oversight Committee that he and other federal prosecutors investigating sex trafficking crimes against the deceased financier thought that taking his case to trial would be a “crapshoot.”

Among his reservations: that some of his victims didn’t believe that Epstein had even committed a crime.

In testimony before the committee investigating the Epstein case, Acosta also revealed that several high-ranking Justice Department officials in Washington were consulted about the case.

The committee on Friday released the transcript from Acosta’s September testimony along with more than 1,800 documents the committee obtained from Epstein’s estate.

Ultimately, Acosta signed off on a plea deal that gave Epstein immunity from federal sex trafficking charges, despite evidence that Epstein had molested dozens of high school girls whom he lured to his home to give him massages. The “massages” were a pretense to molest the girls, who ranged in age from 13 to 17 years of age.

Epstein ultimately pleaded guilty to two state prostitution charges, one including a minor, and would serve only 13 months in a county jail.

While Epstein’s high-powered lawyers pressured the Justice Department to let Epstein off the hook entirely, Acosta believed that his crimes warranted some jail time. Still, he and the other prosecutors handling the case all agreed that taking it to trial would risk him escaping jail altogether, he said.

Part of the reason was the reluctance of his victims to testify.

“Some refused to talk whatsoever,” Acosta said of the victims. “Others said he did nothing wrong and that’s the evidence you have, right?”

Still, public court records show that the FBI did have other evidence including phone records showing Epstein had contacted underage girls, physical evidence that the girls had been in his home and phone message pads showing countless messages left for him about “girls” being available for “massages.”

Acosta said he wasn’t familiar with the corroborating evidence in the case and relied on his top prosecutors’ recommendations.

He explained to the committee that while the prosecutors believed a crime had been committed, he didn’t think jurors would understand that the girls were misled and sexually abused — in other words, the jury would think they were prostitutes.

“I want to be crystal-crystal-clear, lest I be taken out of context or lest I be clipped on this: No one in our office ever thought that the victims were anything less than victims. No one thought that they were — you know, the idea that they were involved as anything other than victims — did not cross the mind of a soul,’ he said.

But the Palm Beach state attorney at the time, Barry Krischer, had issues with the victims accepting payments from Epstein. This, Acosta said, reflected “at least how some people in the Palm Beach community thought and does reflect to some degree at least what some jurors would think.”

Acosta admitted that Epstein’s high-powered lawyers — and their tactics of attacking the victims’ credibility would also make the case hard to win at trial.

“We put him in jail, he registered as a sex offender, and the victims had an opportunity to recover. And that was a win,” Acosta said. “Looking at all of this, the ultimate judgment was, ‘Do you roll the dice?’ and if he gets away with it, you’re sending a signal to the community that he can get away with it.”

Epstein died in federal custody in 2019 in what was ruled a suicide, after prosecutors in the Southern District of New York brought fresh sex charges against him. The new charges followed the Miami Herald’s 2019 "Perversion of Justice" investigation, detailing how Epstein had negotiated his sweetheart plea deal.

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