The new majority House Democrats continue to investigate President Donald Trump, his Cabinet, and others connected to his administration, including a push to reopen the sex trafficking case against Jeffrey Epstein, a millionaire who was convicted of two felony prostitution charges and jailed for 13 months.
The left, including the Miami Herald, portray the plea deal Epstein made that included then-U.S. attorney in Miami and Trump’s current secretary of Labor, Alex Acosta, as protecting Epstein from more serious charges and a lengthy prison sentence for sex trafficking underage girls at his Florida mansion and on his private jet.
And now, the Herald reported, Democrats want to reopen the case:
Fourteen Democratic members of Congress have asked the U.S. attorney general to reopen the criminal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the 66-year-old Palm Beach hedge fund manager accused of sexually trafficking underage girls.
The group, led by Florida Democrats Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Lois Frankel, and Jackie Speier of California, asked President Donald Trump’s new attorney general, William Barr, to reopen the controversial non-prosecution agreement under which Epstein and a group of unidentified co-conspirators received federal immunity for sex trafficking crimes.
Last week, a federal judge ruled that the 2008 deal, which was sealed, was illegal because it violated Epstein’s victims’ rights.
As pressure has grown on Acosta to resign, Republican lawmakers, including Florida Sen. Rick Scott, have called for a review of the case. In February, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility began a probe into whether Acosta and other prosecutors committed any misconduct.
“We urge the DOJ to reopen the non-prosecution agreement to allow for a thorough investigation of these heinous crimes,’’ the Democrats said in a letter to Barr.
“They also asked the Justice Department to release its investigation, presumably upon its completion,” the Herald reported.
The Herald went on to praise its investigation of the Epstein case and a plea deal that “revealed how Acosta and other prosecutors worked in concert with Epstein’s high-powered lawyers to curtail the criminal investigation in order to cut a secret plea bargain.”
The Herald concluded in its report that the arrangement prevented Epstein’s victims from speaking out in the case because they were not aware of the proceedings.
The Herald did include that Acosta has said he thought the plea deal was the best way to ensure Epstein serve some time behind bars and register as a sex offender.
Epstein was released from prison in 2009.
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