Epstein trial would have been 'crapshoot', plea-deal prosecutor tells Congress
Source: The Guardian
Fri 17 Oct 2025 18.23 EDT
Last modified on Sat 18 Oct 2025 04.00 EDT
Alex Acosta, the former US attorney for the southern district of Florida who negotiated a plea deal in 2008 with Jeffrey Epstein, testified before the House oversight committee last month that going to trial would have been a “crapshoot” due to lack of cooperation from victims.
In a transcript of the six-hour interview released on Friday, Acosta, who later served in the first Trump administration as labor secretary, described the evidentiary hurdles a federal prosecution of Esptein would have faced, and told why his office turned the case over to Florida state prosecutors, which resulted in the disgraced financier pleading guilty to charges of soliciting sex from a minor.
“Ultimately, the trial was a crapshoot, and we just wanted the guy to go to jail,” Acosta told members of the oversight panel.
Questions over the government’s non-prosecution agreement with Epstein have hung heavily over the scandal, generating speculation over the presence of larger forces at work.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/17/alexander-acosta-epstein-trial
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Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_K._Brown
Julie is the Miami Herald reporter who broke the story on Epstein's cushy deal with the state of Florida back in 2008.
After her series of news stories she later published a book that follows up with stories of many of the victims. If it weren't for the excellent work Brown did investigating Epstein and Maxwell, they would probably still be doing it even today.
Let me start by saying that OF COURSE Epstein's wealth and connections played a role in the decision making for Acosta and other prosecutors. And that definitely sucks, but that's the system in which Acosta had to operate. People above quoting these large numbers of "known victims" should consider there's "only" about 15 who have ever come forward with their stories 
IMHO, in assessing just how wrong Acosta's decision was, I think it makes sense to consider 2022 events. The full weight of the Federal DOJ, under Biden, was brought to bear against Ghislaine Maxwell, and many more victims had become willing to testify in the interim (don't forget that in 2008 most of them were still fairly young, there was no Miami Herald story, etc).
Yet In the end, even at that late date in 2022, after Epstein was dead and 20 years had passed, only 4 women testified against Maxwell, and prosecutors only secured ONE federal trafficking charge against Maxwell, and it was for trafficking her to Epstein.
That outcome suggests to me that whole thing was a less "federal jury friendly" than a lot of people realize, even in 2022. 2008 I'm sure would've an even less friendly set of circumstances for Federal prosecutors to bring their case.
MHO, fwiw. Acosta is still a piece of shit, though.
It took a lot of footwork rounding up victims and convincing them to come in it.
But Alex Acosta beat the class-action lawyer by keeping his deal hush-hush until it was actually done with the judge and with Epstein. So no other victims except Virginia Roberts and maybe one other, were mentioned on the case. I seem to recall that even Ghislaine Maxwell was left out of it, because Epstein wanted to protect her too.
That's why the judge was lenient, he had no idea how big this was. Acosta made sure of that.
and I will absolutely change my opinion on this subject. I've followed the case pretty closely since 2018 and never seen anyone claim what you are saying here.
Also I don't know that it's a standard part of criminal proceedings that the victims(s) are consulted along the way with regards to what they believe should happen to the perp, sentence-wise, and that their wishes are routinely honored. I would speculate that it is typically not the case, but again, if you have proof to the contrary I'm happy to consider it.
Bottom-line about this though, Federal prosecutors win like 97% of the time, or some such high number. The reason is because they routinely decline to prosecute unless it's a slam dunk, and most importantly, on a slam dunk on FEDERAL level charges. Solicitation of minors for sex is not a federal crime, it's a state crime. And again, look at the Maxwell case in 2022. Only 1 trafficking charge 'stuck'. Even after so much shit was publicly known, unlike 2008.
I am in NO WAY saying that he should've gotten off as lightly as he did, but I mostly blame Florida authorities for that outcome. It's not hard for me to believe Acosta judged that a federal case, on federal charges, would be a crap-shoot given what was known to him at the time.
Small consolation here though, there's no known victims who claimed they met Maxwell/Epstein after he'd been charged, so AFA anyone knows, the charges were actually enough to get him to stop doing what he was doing