At least half a dozen top Trump administration officials appear in the Jeffrey Epstein files
...
Alex Acosta, who was Trump’s Labor secretary during his first term, led the first federal criminal probe into Epstein as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Acosta approved a much-maligned secret nonprosecutorial agreement that allowed Epstein to plead guilty in 2008 to lesser state charges, which helped him avoid potentially decades of jail time. Acosta has defended the plea deal and said that his office "acted appropriately" given the context of the 2008 case. “Times have changed, and coverage of this case has certainly changed,” he said in 2019 after Epstein's arrest in New York.
Reached for comment, a White House spokesperson referred NBC News to remarks Trump made on Thursday about Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who admitted this week to visiting Epstein's island in 2012.
“No I wasn’t aware of it,” he said of Lutnick’s trip, adding, “I actually haven’t spoken to him about it, I wasn’t, but from what I hear, he was there with his wife and children. And I guess in some cases some people were. I wasn’t. I was never there. Somebody will someday say that. I was never there.”
...