General Discussion

No, but he worked in the 1st Trump administration. Alex Acosta was the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida in 2007 & 2008 and approved a secret plea deal with Epstein which was later determined to be illegal. The agreement granted immunity from all federal criminal charges to Epstein, along with four named co-conspirators and any unnamed "potential co-conspirators". That agreement "essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein's sex crimes". At the time, this halted the investigation and sealed the indictment.

In 2017, Acosta was nominated to be Secretary of the Department of Labor and then confirmed by the Senate. When he was vetted for his cabinet post in the Trump administration, Acosta stated “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.” According to an internal review conducted by the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), which was released in November 2020, Acosta showed "poor judgment" in granting Epstein a non-prosecution agreement and failing to notify Epstein's alleged victims about this agreement. In the report, Acosta denied that Epstein was an intelligence asset. The OPR report also stated that it found no evidence that Epstein was a cooperating witness or an intelligence asset.

Acosta resigned as Secretary of Labor on July 19, 2019, approximately 2 weeks after Epstein was arrested.