The House Oversight Committee released a trove of Jeffrey Epstein documents Friday, including flight manifests from his private plane and a transcript of an interview with former U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta.
The flight manifests reveal high-profile passengers, including Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, Walter Cronkite, Richard Branson, and former President Bill Clinton.
None of these individuals have been accused of wrongdoing.
Bill Clinton appears repeatedly in the flight logs. One 2002 flight shows him traveling with Secret Service agents from New York to Africa. Clinton isn’t accused of any criminal activity in relation to Epstein.
Acosta, who served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, negotiated Epstein’s controversial 2008 plea deal. The deal avoided federal charges, required Epstein to serve 13 months in jail, and register as a sex offender while paying restitution to victims.
“And so in part it was influenced by that, and in large part it was also influenced by the viability of the case,” Acosta told the committee.
“Every attorney that looked at the case, from the prosecuting attorney, again, through the entire chain, looked at the evidence, and there were evidentiary issues with the victims. Many victims refused to testify. Many victims had changing stories. All of us understood why they had changing stories, but they did. And defense counsel would have – cross-examination would have been withering,” he added.
Acosta explained his rationale for the plea deal: “Our judgment in this case, based on the evidence known at the time, was that it was better to have a billionaire serve time in jail, register as a sex offender and pay his victims restitution than risk a trial with a reduced likelihood of success. I supported that judgment then, and based on the state of the law as it then stood and the evidence known at that time, I would support that judgment again.”
He said the state attorney in Florida had “let him off entirely.”
Acosta called this approach “entirely unacceptable,” arguing that Epstein serving time sent a strong message to the community, per Fox News.
“And so our thinking at the time was, you know, the State attorney is letting him get away with this. The State attorney is asking pre-trial diversion. Unacceptable. Entirely unacceptable. But a billionaire going to jail sends a strong signal to the community that this is not acceptable, that this is not right, that this cannot happen,” Acosta said.
Acosta admitted that Epstein’s legal team “got awfully close to the line of unethical,” and said he “resisted” some of their tactics during the plea negotiations.
In 2019, while serving as U.S. Secretary of Labor, Acosta again defended his actions.
“Simply put, the Palm Beach state attorney’s office was ready to let Epstein walk free, no jail time,” he said. “Prosecutors in my former office found this to be completely unacceptable.”
He noted that the legal environment has shifted since 2008. “We now have 12 years of knowledge and hindsight and we live in a very different world. Today’s world treats victims very, very differently.”
The House Oversight Committee released these documents to provide transparency into how federal authorities handled the Epstein case.
The flight manifests have reignited public scrutiny of Epstein’s high-profile connections, even as officials stress that inclusion on the plane does not imply criminal activity.
Epstein faced federal sex trafficking charges stemming from years of alleged abuse, which ultimately led to his 2008 plea deal.
The release of these documents allows lawmakers, journalists, and the public to examine the decisions made during the original investigation and the rationale behind the controversial plea.
