Epstein trial would have been ‘crapshoot’, plea-deal prosecutor tells Congress

Ex-Trump labor secretary Alex Acosta defends not taking case to trial in September testimony to House lawmakers

Alex Acosta, the former US attorney for the southern district of Florida who negotiated a plea deal in 2008 with Jeffrey Epstein, testified before the House oversight committee last month that going to trial would have been a crapshoot" due to lack of cooperation from victims.

In a transcript of the six-hour interview released on Friday, Acosta, who later served in the first Trump administration as labor secretary, described the evidentiary hurdles a federal prosecution of Esptein would have faced, and told why his office turned the case over to Florida state prosecutors, which resulted in the disgraced financier pleading guilty to charges of soliciting sex from a minor.