House releases new Epstein investigation documents, Alex Acosta interview
The House Oversight Committee released a new tranche of documents Friday collected as part of its ongoing investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The files feature call logs; schedules of meetings between Epstein and prominent figures in the arts, technology and business; as well as the transcript of an interview the committee held with Alexander Acosta, the former U.S. labor secretary who served as the top federal prosecutor in South Florida when Epstein received a widely criticized plea deal nearly two decades ago.
One redacted call log appears to show two undated calls from someone listed as “Donald Trump.” Epstein and President Donald Trump were once friends, but Trump has said he ended the relationship. After Epstein was arrested again in 2019, Trump, then in his first term as president, said: “I had a falling-out with him a long time ago. I don’t think I’ve spoken to him for 15 years. I wasn’t a fan.”
On Friday, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said, “It’s not news that Epstein knew Donald Trump, because Donald Trump kicked Epstein out of his club for being a creep. Democrats and the Fake News Media knew about Epstein and his victims for years and did nothing to help them while President Trump was calling for transparency, and is now delivering on it with thousands of pages of documents.”
Trump has been repeatedly dismissive of any calls for more information into Epstein in recent months, referring to them as a Democratic “hoax.”
The documents’ redacted emails and calendar entries show scheduled breakfasts, lunches, dinners and meetings from 2012 to 2014 with a variety of powerful people, including the filmmaker Woody Allen as well as the billionaires Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg and Reid Hoffman. Allen, Thiel and Hoffman did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for Meta, Zuckerberg’s tech company, referred The Post to a statement given to Vanity Fair in 2019: “Mark met Epstein in passing one time at a dinner honoring scientists that was not organized by Epstein,” Ben LaBolt, a spokesperson for Zuckerberg, told the magazine. “Mark did not communicate with Epstein again following the dinner.”
A spokesperson for Valar Ventures, a venture capital firm co-founded by Thiel, said in September, after Thiel’s name arose in a previous document release, that the company hopes to put money Epstein invested “to positive use by helping victims.”
Acosta sat for an interview with the committee in September. According to the transcript released Friday, he defended the actions his office took while prosecuting Epstein in the 2000s.
Despite allegations that he molested dozens of girls, Epstein reached a plea agreement that allowed him to plead guilty in state court in 2008 to soliciting prostitution and face no federal charges. The wealthy, politically connected financier spent a little more than a year behind bars and was given generous work-release privileges.
Acosta told the House committee that a trial would have been a “crapshoot.” He cited a reluctance among some of Epstein’s victims to testify, inconsistencies in some of their stories and “evidentiary issues,” according to the 172-page transcript released Friday. Victims would have faced “withering impeachment” by Epstein’s defense attorneys, he said.
“A billionaire going to jail sends a strong signal to the community that this is not acceptable, that this is not right, that this cannot happen,” Acosta said. “Looking back in hindsight, there are a number of issues … that I will say caused the community and the victims to feel — to feel that this was not a good resolution, and I get that.”
Acosta said his office objected, unsuccessfully, to the work-release privileges. But he rebutted the claim that Epstein had received a “sweetheart deal.”
Democrats on the committee suggested Acosta had failed in his duties.
“The transcripts of Alex Acosta’s interview confirm what we’ve known all along: he has no remorse for his mishandling of the Epstein case,” said Sara Guerrero, a spokesperson for the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. “Because of the deal Alex Acosta gave Epstein, he was able to continue assaulting and raping young women and girls for another decade.”
Jeffrey Neiman, a lawyer for Acosta, rebutted this view, and said in a statement: “In his testimony released on October 17, Mr. Acosta made it clear that, had the U.S. attorney’s office known in 2006 what is publicly known today, the 2006 prosecution would have been handled differently. However, the 2006 case was based on the facts then known and provable in a courtroom.”
Acosta resigned as labor secretary in 2019 during Trump’s first term amid mounting scrutiny of his role as a prosecutor in the Epstein case. He told the committee the decision to step down “was entirely my choice.” One month after Acosta’s resignation, as Epstein faced federal sex trafficking charges, he died by suicide in jail.
In addition to the schedules and Acosta interview, the committee published letters from former U.S. attorneys general Eric Holder and Merrick Garland, as well as former FBI director James B. Comey. All three had been asked by the committee to assist with its investigation; each said they had no knowledge or information related to Epstein. Redacted flight logs, call and text logs, and property maintenance records were also released. The flight logs contained several references to Britain’s Prince Andrew, who renounced his titles Friday due to his ties to Epstein.
The committee has received a wide range of materials in response to subpoenas it has sent to the Epstein estate and the Justice Department, as well as statements from individuals believed to be familiar with Epstein and the federal investigation into him.
Some of those documents have been released publicly, often in redacted form, including a book created as a gift for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003; a version of Epstein’s last will and testament; a Sept. 24, 2007, non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of Florida; and entries from Epstein’s address books from Jan. 1, 1990, through Aug. 10, 2019.
One message in the birthday book featured the outline of a nude woman, along with lines of dialogue. It is signed “Donald.” Democrats say the message was from Trump; the president has denied that he wrote the message, and has said the signature is not his.
Demands from both Democrats and members of Trump’s base for the full release of the government’s Epstein files have escalated during the second Trump administration. Much of the GOP base has been unsatisfied with the information offered thus far by Trump’s Justice Department, after being promised full transparency by the president and other officials after President Joe Biden left the White House.
In the House, a second bipartisan effort is underway to force the release of the federal government’s Epstein files.
Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) are attempting to trigger that release through a discharge petition process. If their petition reaches 218 signatures, that would force Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to hold a floor vote on whether to compel a second vote that would mandate that the Justice Department release its Epstein-related files.
Johnson has come under criticism for refusing to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) while the House remains out of session during the government shutdown. Grijalva won a special election to succeed her father, the late Raúl Grijalva, on Sept. 23. She has promised to provide the petition’s 218th signature. Democrats have protested the delay.
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• Desmond Butler, Clara Ence Morse and Aaron Schaffer contributed.