Former U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta used “poor judgment” when he chose not to prosecute Palm Beach billionaire Jeffrey Epstein on federal sex-trafficking charges and instead let him plead guilty to a state offense of soliciting young girls for sex, a Justice Department review of the case has found.
The department’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that Acosta, who served as labor secretary in the Trump administration until the scandal over his mishandling of the Epstein case forced him to resign in July 2019, committed no professional wrongdoing and violated no ethics standards. The report said the decision did not involve corruption, according to persons familiar with the report, which had not yet been made public by midday Thursday.
“Letting a well-connected billionaire get away with child rape and international sex trafficking isn’t ‘poor judgment’ — it is a disgusting failure. Americans ought to be enraged,” Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Oversight Subcommittee, said in a statement Thursday afternoon. “Jeffrey Epstein should be rotting behind bars today, but the Justice Department failed Epstein’s victims at every turn.”
Read more at our news partner the Miami Herald.
