Former US attorney who negotiated Epstein’s 2008 plea deal appearing before House Oversight committee

By Annie Grayer, CNN

(CNN) — The former US Attorney from southern Florida who negotiated a controversial plea deal in 2008 with Jeffrey Epstein is appearing before the House Oversight Committee as the panel continues its probe into the late convicted sex offender.

Alexander Acosta, the former US Attorney in Miami, arrived on Capitol Hill Friday to meet voluntarily behind closed doors to speak with both Democrats and Republicans.

“This Acosta deposition is a big deal, and I expect him to have a very challenging, probably six-hour deposition,” House Oversight Chair James Comer said ahead of the interview.

Acosta, who also served as former President Donald Trump’s secretary of the Department of Labor during his first term, resigned in 2019 amid renewed scrutiny over the plea deal he had negotiated with Epstein a decade before.

Epstein, a well-connected multi-millionaire, avoided a federal trial at the time of the plea deal and served just 13 months in prison for state prostitution charges over his involvement with underage girls. A Miami Herald investigation described the plea deal, negotiated by Acosta, as the “deal of a lifetime.”

In July 2019, the financier was arrested and charged in connection with having operated a sex trafficking ring. The next month, Epstein died by suicide at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, the federal detention facility where he was being held.

The new charges brought forward in 2019 sparked calls for Acosta’s resignation. At the time of his withdrawal as labor secretary, Acosta said he made his decision to remove himself as a distraction.

“I do not think it is right and fair to this administration’s Labor Department to have Epstein as the focus rather than the incredible economy that we have today,” he said. “And so I called the president this morning. I told him that I thought the right thing was to step aside.”

The 2008 plea deal has come under scrutiny yet again amid the House Oversight Committee’s ongoing investigation into the Epstein case.

Earlier this week, testimony from FBI Director Kash Patel underscored how some in the Trump administration appear to be pointing blame at Acosta as the president and his team are being pushed by members of their own party to be more transparent and release all of the Epstein case files.

During his Tuesday hearing on Capitol Hill, Patel twice brought up Acosta unprompted, including in his opening statement.

The oversight panel, meanwhile, has been plowing ahead with its investigation into the so-called Epstein files.

The panel subpoenaed a group of high-profile Democratic and Republican figures for information and interviews between August and mid-October, including Acosta, and have so far released former Attorney General Bill Barr’s deposition on the matter.

The Republican-led committee has also received two batches of documents from Epstein’s estate as the result of a subpoena, including a collection of letters gifted to Epstein for his 50th birthday. The panel has subpoenaed the Department of Justice for all of its Epstein-related files, and made public the documents it has received so far, most of which were already public.

In recent days, the committee also met with Epstein abuse survivors and is working with the Treasury Department to turn over certain bank activity reports.

The lawmakers have withdrawn subpoenas for former Attorneys General Alberto Gonzalez and Jeff Sessions, a committee aide told CNN, after both men stated in sworn letters that neither possessed any information related to the committee’s investigation into Epstein.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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CNN’s Manu Raju contributed to this report.