Alexander Acosta
Based on Wikipedia: Alexander Acosta
In the summer of 2019, a federal prosecutor's secret deal came back to haunt him. Alexander Acosta, then serving as the United States Secretary of Labor, resigned from President Trump's cabinet amid a firestorm of criticism. The reason? A plea agreement he had approved more than a decade earlier—one that let a wealthy financier named Jeffrey Epstein escape federal charges for sexually abusing dozens of teenage girls.
The story of Alexander Acosta is the story of how a brilliant first-generation American rose to the heights of power, only to see his legacy forever tarnished by a single catastrophic decision.
The Son of Cuban Immigrants
Rene Alexander Acosta was born on January 16, 1969, in Miami, Florida. His parents had fled Cuba, part of the massive wave of emigration that followed Fidel Castro's revolution. Acosta would become the first person in his family to graduate from college—and he didn't just graduate. He excelled.
After attending the prestigious Gulliver Schools in Miami, Acosta headed to Harvard, where he earned a bachelor's degree in economics in 1990. Four years later, he graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School. The Latin phrase means "with praise" and is awarded to students in roughly the top third of their class. For the son of immigrants who had arrived in America with nothing, it was a remarkable achievement.
His first job after law school was equally impressive. He clerked for Samuel Alito, who was then a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Alito would later be appointed to the Supreme Court by President George W. Bush, becoming one of the most influential conservative justices of his generation. A clerkship with a future Supreme Court justice is among the most coveted positions a young lawyer can hold—it opens doors that remain closed to almost everyone else.
Rising Through the Ranks
From there, Acosta moved to Kirkland and Ellis, one of the largest and most profitable law firms in the world, where he specialized in employment and labor issues. He also taught law at George Mason University, covering topics like employment discrimination and civil rights.
Then came the George W. Bush administration.
Acosta would eventually hold four different positions requiring Senate confirmation during the Bush years—an unusual distinction. He started as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice in 2001. A year later, he joined the National Labor Relations Board, the independent federal agency that enforces labor law and protects workers' rights to organize. During his eight months on the board, he participated in or authored more than 125 opinions.
In August 2003, Acosta returned to the Justice Department as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights—the top civil rights official in the federal government. He was the first Hispanic person ever to hold this position.
A Record of Accomplishment
Acosta's tenure leading the Civil Rights Division produced some genuinely significant work. He increased federal prosecutions against human trafficking—the modern term for what is essentially slavery. He intervened in an Oklahoma case to protect a Muslim student's right to wear a hijab, the head covering worn by many Muslim women, in public school. Religious liberty cases rarely make headlines, but they matter enormously to the people involved.
Perhaps most notably, Acosta worked with Mississippi authorities to reopen the investigation into the 1955 murder of Emmett Till. Till was a fourteen-year-old Black boy from Chicago who was brutally murdered while visiting relatives in Mississippi after allegedly whistling at a white woman. His killers were acquitted by an all-white jury after just sixty-seven minutes of deliberation. The case became a catalyst for the civil rights movement—Till's mother insisted on an open-casket funeral so the world could see what had been done to her son.
Reopening such a case decades later required political courage and genuine commitment to justice.
But Acosta's time at Civil Rights wasn't without controversy. A later investigation found that his predecessor, Bradley Schlozman, had illegally given preferential treatment to conservatives in hiring decisions and had lied to Congress about it. While Schlozman bore primary responsibility, the inspector general concluded that Acosta "did not sufficiently supervise" him and failed to ensure that hiring decisions were based on proper considerations. Schlozman was never prosecuted.
The United States Attorney
In 2005, Acosta became the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, covering Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and the Palm Beaches. This is one of the most prominent prosecutorial positions in the country—the Southern District handles everything from drug trafficking to white-collar crime to terrorism.
Acosta's office racked up an impressive record. They prosecuted Jack Abramoff, the infamous lobbyist whose corruption scandal brought down multiple members of Congress. They convicted José Padilla, an American citizen who had been held for years as an "enemy combatant" on suspicion of planning a "dirty bomb" attack. They brought down the founders of the Cali Cartel, one of the most powerful drug trafficking organizations in history, securing a $2.1 billion forfeiture—that's billion with a B—for importing 200,000 kilograms of cocaine into the United States.
The office also went after the Swiss banking giant UBS, forcing the bank to pay $780 million in fines and, for the first time in history, hand over the names of Americans using secret Swiss accounts to evade taxes. For decades, Swiss banking secrecy had been nearly impenetrable. Acosta's prosecutors punched through it.
They prosecuted corrupt local politicians, including a county commission chairman and a sheriff. They brought more than 700 healthcare fraud cases, recovering over $2 billion in stolen Medicare funds.
By any normal measure, Acosta was building a stellar career.
Jeffrey Epstein
And then there was Jeffrey Epstein.
In March 2005, the Palm Beach Police Department began investigating Epstein after a parent reported that the wealthy financier had sexually abused her fourteen-year-old daughter. Over the next thirteen months, police conducted an undercover investigation, including a search of Epstein's Palm Beach mansion. What they found was disturbing: evidence suggesting that Epstein had sexually abused dozens of underage girls, many of them recruited from local high schools with promises of money for "massages."
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, commonly known as the FBI, got involved. By June 2007, federal prosecutors had prepared a fifty-three-page indictment. It appeared that Epstein would face serious federal charges—the kind that could send him to prison for decades.
Instead, something very different happened.
The Plea Deal
In August 2007, Acosta's office began negotiating with Epstein's lawyers. One of those lawyers was Jay Lefkowitz, a well-connected Republican who had served in the Bush White House. The negotiations took place over months, including an off-site breakfast meeting between Acosta and Lefkowitz in West Palm Beach.
On September 24, 2007—one day before prosecutors were prepared to file federal charges—Epstein signed a non-prosecution agreement. Under its terms, Epstein would plead guilty to state charges of procuring a minor for prostitution and soliciting prostitution. He would register as a sex offender. He would serve thirteen months in a minimum-security county jail.
But here's what made the deal extraordinary: it granted immunity from all federal criminal charges not just to Epstein, but also to four named co-conspirators and any unnamed "potential co-conspirators." The agreement essentially shut down the ongoing FBI investigation into whether there were more victims and whether other powerful people had participated in Epstein's crimes.
Even more unusual, Acosta agreed to keep the deal secret from Epstein's victims—despite a federal law requiring that crime victims be notified about the progress of cases involving their abusers. The non-prosecution agreement was sealed until after a judge approved it, preventing any of the girls Epstein had abused from showing up in court to object.
And that thirteen-month jail sentence? Epstein was allowed to leave the facility for up to twelve hours a day on "work release," spending most of his time at a comfortable office in downtown West Palm Beach.
The Deal Unravels
For years, the agreement held. Epstein served his time, registered as a sex offender, and resumed his life among the wealthy and powerful.
In 2008, lawyers representing two of Epstein's victims filed a federal lawsuit challenging the non-prosecution agreement. They argued it violated the Crime Victims' Rights Act of 2004, often abbreviated as the CVRA, which requires federal prosecutors to notify victims about the progress of criminal cases. The government fought the lawsuit for more than a decade, arguing that the law didn't apply.
Meanwhile, Acosta left the U.S. Attorney's office in 2009 to become the dean of Florida International University's law school. In 2013, he became chairman of U.S. Century Bank, the largest domestically owned Hispanic community bank in Florida.
Then Donald Trump won the presidency.
Secretary of Labor
In February 2017, Trump nominated Acosta to serve as Secretary of Labor. During his confirmation hearing, senators asked about the Epstein case. Acosta defended the plea deal, arguing that state prosecutors had initially planned to bring even weaker charges and that his intervention had at least ensured Epstein went to jail and registered as a sex offender.
The Senate confirmed him by a vote of 60 to 38.
But the Epstein case wouldn't stay buried. In November 2018, the Miami Herald published a devastating investigative series by reporter Julie K. Brown. The series detailed the extent of Epstein's crimes, the sweetheart deal he had received, and the collaboration between federal prosecutors and Epstein's defense attorneys to keep victims in the dark.
The Herald obtained emails from Epstein's lawyer to Acosta after their breakfast meeting. "Thank you for the commitment you made to me during our Oct. 12 meeting," Lefkowitz wrote. He expressed hope that Acosta would keep the deal confidential and "not contact any of the identified individuals, potential witnesses or potential civil claimants."
The story reignited public outrage. Democratic members of Congress demanded an investigation. Editorials called for Acosta's resignation.
The Court Rules
In February 2019, a federal judge finally ruled on the decade-old lawsuit filed by Epstein's victims. Judge Kenneth Marra found that the government had indeed violated the Crime Victims' Rights Act. The victims should have been notified about the non-prosecution agreement before it was signed, giving them the opportunity to influence its terms.
The judge was careful to note that he wasn't ruling the decision not to prosecute was improper. He was simply ruling that victims had a right to know about it—and that right had been violated.
The case had a complicated appellate history. The Eleventh Circuit initially affirmed the judge's decision, then reversed itself sitting as a full court, ruling that the Crime Victims' Rights Act didn't create a right for victims to sue the government if no indictment was ever actually filed. In February 2022, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal, leaving that ruling in place.
Epstein's Arrest and Acosta's Resignation
On July 6, 2019, FBI agents arrested Jeffrey Epstein at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey as he returned from Paris on his private jet. He was charged with sex trafficking of minors in New York, based on conduct alleged to have occurred from 2002 to 2005—the same period covered by Acosta's non-prosecution agreement.
The 2008 deal had covered only the Southern District of Florida. The Southern District of New York—a different federal district with different prosecutors—was free to bring its own charges.
With Epstein back in the headlines, pressure on Acosta became unbearable. On July 19, 2019, he resigned as Secretary of Labor, standing alongside President Trump on the White House lawn. Trump praised him and blamed the "fake news media" for his departure.
One month later, Epstein was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York. His death was ruled a suicide, though conspiracy theories proliferated given the powerful people who might have been implicated had he lived to testify.
The Aftermath
An internal review by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, released in November 2020, concluded that Acosta had shown "poor judgment" in granting Epstein the non-prosecution agreement and failing to notify victims. The review found no evidence supporting a claim—attributed to an anonymous source—that Acosta had been told to back off because Epstein "belonged to intelligence."
Curiously, the review also revealed an eleven-month gap in Acosta's emails coinciding with the Epstein investigation and plea negotiations. Lawyers for Epstein's victims said they had been seeking those emails for years and were never told about the missing data.
In December 2021, a jury in New York convicted Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's longtime associate, on five counts related to sex trafficking. Maxwell had argued that the 2008 plea deal—which covered unnamed "potential co-conspirators"—should have protected her. The argument failed. In September 2024, a federal appeals court upheld her conviction and sentence. She asked the Supreme Court to review whether Acosta's agreement with Epstein should bind prosecutors in other districts. In October 2024, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Congressional Testimony
In August 2025, the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed Acosta to testify about the Epstein case. He appeared before the committee on September 19, 2025.
During his testimony, Acosta said he did not recall any discussions of "potential financial crimes" during the Epstein investigation. This was a significant claim—Epstein's wealth had always been mysterious, and some had speculated he might have been involved in money laundering or other financial crimes that were never pursued.
A month later, Bloomberg News reported that it had obtained email correspondence showing that Acosta's office had indeed discussed financial crimes and that Acosta had been copied on relevant messages. Records related to this investigation had been stored in a folder titled "Money Laundering."
The discrepancy between Acosta's testimony and the documentary record raised new questions about what he knew and when he knew it.
Life After Politics
Since March 2025, Acosta has served on the board of directors of Newsmax, the conservative media company, where he chairs the audit committee. An audit committee oversees a company's financial reporting and internal controls—ironic, perhaps, given the questions surrounding his handling of potential financial crimes in the Epstein case.
He remains a member of the Republican Party. His earlier achievements—the civil rights prosecutions, the human trafficking cases, the historic banking settlement—have been largely overshadowed by his role in what many consider one of the most egregious failures of the federal justice system in modern history.
What Went Wrong?
The Epstein case raises uncomfortable questions that go beyond any single prosecutor. How did a man accused of systematically abusing dozens of teenage girls receive what critics called a "sweetheart deal"? Why were victims kept in the dark about an agreement that affected their rights? What role did Epstein's wealth, his powerful friends, and his army of well-connected lawyers play in the outcome?
Some have speculated that Epstein had compromising information about powerful people and used it as leverage. Others suggest the case was simply too complex and well-defended for prosecutors to feel confident at trial. The Justice Department review found "poor judgment" but no corruption.
Whatever the explanation, the case stands as a stark illustration of how differently the justice system can treat the rich and the poor, the connected and the powerless. A typical defendant facing similar allegations—with victims numbering in the dozens and evidence gathered over more than a year—would likely have faced decades in federal prison.
Jeffrey Epstein got thirteen months in a county jail with work release.
Alexander Acosta signed the deal that made it possible. It's a decision that will define his legacy far more than his Harvard degrees, his Supreme Court clerkship, or his years of public service. In the end, one choice can overshadow everything else.