Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta's role in the 2008 plea deal for billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein just keeps getting more and more vile. The latest reporting from the Washington Post reveals that despite the fact that the probe flagged 40 underaged victims of Epstein, including a 14-year-old who first alerted police, prosecutors chose an older victim for solicitation charge, allowing Epstein to avoid being registered as a sex offender.
"They were cutting a plea deal. It wasn't a prosecution," said attorney Spencer Kuvin, who represented the 14-year-old girl who alerted police. "They had a grab bag of 40 girls to choose from." They chose a girl who was 16 at the time Epstein got his hands on her. That meant he didn't have to register as a sex offender in New Mexico, where he has a 7,600-acre property called Zorro Ranch, or in more than half of the other states in the country that set the age of consent at 16. Kuvin as well as some of the attorneys of the other alleged victims are attempting to void that non-prosecution plea deal. A side-effect of that would be the loss of immunity to potential co-conspirators.
"Society in general is much more punitive and harsh if the victim was 14 versus 17," attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, told the Post. He wasn't part of the Epstein prosecution, but is working with a New York City Bar Association group studying the registration law. "The collateral consequences, including registration, are much more serious with a younger victim." Epstein ended up serving 13 months in jail on two charges, one involving the minor who was 16. The second didn't refer to a specific victim. That's despite the 40 underaged victims who came forward in this probe and the more than 80 girls and women the Miami Herald has been able to find in its investigations of public records, civil lawsuits, and interviews.
This will add fuel to the fire for House Democrats, some of whom are calling for Acosta's resignation. His department is responsible for overseeing investigations of sex trafficking, among other workplace abuses.