What we can learn from the man who gave Epstein the 'deal of a lifetime'

During a late July appearance on CNN, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma) blamed the Obama Administration for the "sweetheart plea deal" that billionaire financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was given in 2008 by then-federal prosecutor Alex Acosta. But host Jake Tapper, MSNBC's Steve Benen and others reminded Mullin that the plea deal went down when George W. Bush, not Barack Obama, was president, and that Acosta was a Bush appointee.

Obama was elected president in November 2008, but Bush didn't leave office until January 20, 2009.

In an op-ed published on September 19, MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin points to Acosta as a prime example of why the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) should never be politicized.

The more that DOJ is politicized by the Trump Administration, Rubin argued, the less effective it will be at fighting crime.

"Having apparently testified to DOJ that he had no information to indicate that Epstein was an intelligence asset," Rubin writes, "can Acosta provide any information as to why a redacted September 2008 FBI memo states Epstein has 'provided information to the FBI, as agreed upon' and what that process entailed?' But perhaps the most significant question is the one we are now asking again, as President Donald Trump places unqualified loyalists throughout the DOJ and prepares to fire veteran prosecutors: When Acosta was first named by then-President George W. Bush as a 36-year-old U.S. attorney, lacking prior experience as a criminal lawyer, much less a federal prosecutor, does Acosta believe he was sufficiently prepared to do justice without fear or favor?"

Rubin notes that the "so-called deal of a lifetime" that DOJ gave Epstein in 2008 "contained terms beyond the specific charge that Epstein would plead to and how much jail time he would serve."

"In particular, it obligated federal prosecutors to provide Epstein with a list of his own victims to facilitate the recovery of damages by those who were minors at the time of their trafficking or abuse," Epstein explains. "In exchange, Epstein agreed to pay for victims' lawyers, who were to be jointly selected by him and federal prosecutors, and not to contest liability to those listed victims — but only as long as their claims were limited under a particular federal statute."

Lisa Rubin's full MSNBC column is available at this link.