Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said Alex Acosta took responsibility Friday for the plea deal he helped broker as the U.S. attorney in south Florida for Jeffrey Epstein.
They also said, however, he was unrepentant for the arrangement many believe led the late, convicted sex offender being able to continue preying on women and girls for years.
“It is clear that Alex Acosta holds no remorse and does not feel, even in hindsight, that Jeffrey Epstein received a sweetheart deal,” Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), told reporters on Capitol Hill.
Ansari and other panel Democrats have, alongside Republicans, been meeting behind closed doors Friday with Acosta as part of House Oversight’s Epstein investigation.
Acosta, who later served as labor secretary during President Donald Trump’s first administration, agrees to speak with lawmakers on his own volition — a departure from other witnesses who have for the past month and a half been giving depositions in compliance with Congressional subpoenas.
During a break in the Friday proceedings, Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) said that while Acosta said he “took responsibility” for the decision not to prosecute Epstein during the George W. Bush administration.
“But,” she added, “when asked if he had directly reviewed the evidence itself in this case, he said that he had not actually read the statements of the victims.”
“Mr. Acosta, at least to us in this deposition, essentially said he didn’t have faith in the victims, their stories and their ability to tell their own story and their own testimony,” Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost said. “It seems like Mr. Acosta really had no idea about what was going on in his own office during this investigation.”
Democrats also said Acosta on Friday evaded questioning about whether the plea deal with Epstein ever came up when he was being vetted to join the first Trump administration.
House Oversight Chair, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), however, offered reporters a different takeaway from the first portion of Acosta’s interview, saying Democrats’ focus on Trump during the interview took away from more substantial questioning.
“They were battering around so many questions about Trump,” Comer said. “The members were talking over each other.”
Comer also defended his committee’s work.
“We’re trying to find out more. Who dropped the ball? Was it Acosta? Was it the FBI? Was it the local prosecutors? Was it the Department of Justice? Those are the questions I think we need to know, because that was part of what the victims asked us to do,” said Comer.
“We’ll see at the end of this — and this will be public record … we’ll see where we need to go from here,” he continued, adding that Acosta still has “several hours of questions to answer.”
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