President Donald Trump has "surrounded" himself with people who have connections to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and that's worrisome to one retired federal prosecutor.
In a Tuesday interview with Substack host Jim Acosta, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Alene Vance (who former President Barack Obama appointed to the Northern District of Alabama) reminded viewers of the numerous high-ranking officials in the Trump administration with ties to Epstein. Acosta played a video of Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), who is a member of the House Oversight Committee, giving multiple names of current and former officials in the second Trump White House who have been named in the Department of Justice's (DOJ) latest batch of Epstein files.
"Multiple administration officials including Howard Lutnick, Elon Musk, who served as the appointee for DOGE efforts in the White House. We know that the secretary of the Navy [flew on Epstein's jet.] We know that Steve Bannon [is in the files]," Stansbury said. "We know that there are more than three dozen associates, family members and individuals directly associated with Donald Trump in those files."
Acosta then pivoted to former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who eventually stepped down from his role in Trump's first administration after more information emerged about the favorable plea deal he offered Epstein in 2007 when he was U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Acosta observed it "seemed so coincidental at first."
"Maybe he just didn't know, right? Then you've got Lutnick. Now we learned that he is surrounded by people who are named in the Epstein files," Vance said. "Look, call me a jaded old prosecutor. We used to argue to juries: 'I didn't pick the witnesses against this defendant, the defendant selected them himself.'"
"These are the people that Donald Trump chooses to align with, to bring into his administration," she added. "And far too many of them seem to have an Epstein tarnish for it to be just sort of a casual coincidence."
