Document alleges Alexander Acosta’s involvement in Jeffrey Epstein plea deal and potential immunity for co‑conspirators

14 The Virgin Islands Daily News PERVERSION OF JUSTICE Thursday, February 28, 2019 PERVERSION CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13 as a massage often led to masturbation, oral se=rszvclother sex act, police and dropped his towel, exposing himself. The alkged abuse dat. back to 2001 and lie told Licata to get comfortable and then. went on for years. in a fimt voice, told her to take off .r cloth.. prosecutors, special offer At 16, Limta had never before been fitlly na- ked in front of anyone. Shaking and panicked. she mechanically pulled off her jeans and stripped down ttt herar=reer for 30 minutes and then reached over and unsnap,. her bra. He then began touching her with me hats. "I kept looking a t the timer because I didn't want to have ts..7.1.:ndoaf.;:f she remembered of the massage...He kept = ' hallr to pinch his nippl.. tijInlao raat,tiYhart"g harder and do this. • • • [REDACTED] SayS She waS 16 when She fitSt vnirenraOgin'as h=e;:snr home on El Brill° Way to give hirn a massage. She says he tried to „siheri ihe shower. Penetrate her with his fingers. l'hell7d2enheinalaust.'ory c ass. It wasn't long before allot of Licata, fellow students at Royal Palm Beach High School had heard about "a army old guy" named Jeffrey who lived in a pink waterfront mansion and was paying !iris S200 . =Jo give him InaEZrnairitilryt, f4.11aInt Beach police, and then the FBI, came knocking on Licata's dO0r. In Iteltoce7f,"=:`,3r=1:=7, 1 a wOuld be many more Jane Do. to fol.: Jane Doe No. 3, Jane Doe No. 4, Jane Does 5,6,7.8 — and as the years went by — Jane Does 102 and 103. Long before frMeToo bmame.the catalyst for a t 72cntrl als au I teff nartxra" decade before the fall of Haney Weinstein, Bill Aff1'0Y EPS,. Cosby and U.S. Olympic gymnast. doctor Larry Nassar — there was Jeffrey Edward Epstein. Epstein, a mult.tillionairc hedge fund manager whose friends included a constella- tiOn of entertainers, politieian, buStheSS titans and royalty. for years lured teenage girls to his Palm Beach mansion as part of a cult-like s. pyramid scheme. police in t. town of Palm BeaCh found. The girls arrived, sometimes by taxi, for trysts at all hours of the day and night. Few were told much more than that they would be paid to give an old man a massage — and that . might ask them to strip down to their undenvear or get naked. But what began In 2007, despite ampk physical evidence and multipk witnesses corroborating t. girls" stori., federal prosecutors and Epstein, law- yers quietly put together a remarkable deal for Epstein, then 54. Hc agreed to plead guilty to two felony pros- titution charg. in state court, and in exchange, he and his accomplices received immunity from federal sex-trafficking charges that could have sent him to prison for life. Hc served 13 months in a ptivate wing of the Palm Beach County stocicade. His alleged co-conspitatOrs, whO helped schedule his sex session, were never prosecuted. The deal. call. a federal nomprosecution agreene=sfIetrd of Epstein, crimes and who else was involved. Thc U.S. attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, was personally involved in the negotia- tions, records, letters and entails show. Acosta is now a member of Pr.ident Donald Trump, Cabinet. As U.S. secretary of Labor, he has oversight over international child labor laws and human trafficking. "How come people who don't have money get sent to jail — and can't even makc bail — and they have to do their time and sit there and think about what they did wrong? He had no repercussiorn and doesn't even beliew hc did .ribcf2:=8,", stud Licata, now 30. officially identifictryTernat Vrent su;y:tsiOftftreteextvictims of EpstLitt n2thoov8. witnesses and allegedcZtiwmaas tcestified in civil court that there were hundreds of girls who were brought to Epstein, homes, including girls from Empe, Latin America and former Soviet Republic countries. But Acosta and Epstein's armada of attorneys — 711:7=vii't "Pi rald - Reofy'Bul ralC ic.att ytd= former Whitewater special =1".clo'n"th !rprstn 1.:daaciradInce.r svetatr acenp= I" a There were really j. "rtIO'Ignog:Z: aliceftiPcIt1=Patt" Detective Joreph Recarcy. For Reiter. business J.:',0YrEeTer,,dabie than any of t. other 8.000 or so wealthy and po:teartf,din Irr cas. involving wealthy residents before — from the murders of heiresses to the rape case tnvolvmg William I.nnedy Smith, a the Kennedy family. The msternmost town in Florida, Palm Beach is a 10.4-square-mile barrier island between the Intracoastal Waterway and thc At- lantic Ocean populated by some of the rich.t IratildnetrthteTenTpuils's his "winter White nieZs nt1 rdast=7:11tr unusual efforts to preserve its well-mannered image, like banning shinless joggers. But it was a linle surprising, even to Reiter, to learn that one of its residents had a revolv- ing door of middle school and high school girls coming to his gated mmpound throughout t. day and night. In thcir first media interviews about the case, Reiter and Roca, revmled ncw details about thy inwstigation, and how they were, in their view, pr.sured by then-Palm Beach State At- = = 'Lir; ar =PIZ f't ase Between March of 2005 — w.n the care was opened — and seven months bier, whcn rioolice crcuted:asdeazInit;a2,7 at Eprin, tvii:Itric:o=tfylatViCert ired acted By the time police felt they had enough evidence to arrest Epstein on sex charg.. they .d identified about 35 possible underage tims and were tracking down at least a dozen more, the poli. report said. vas sumrised at how quickly it snow balled. I thought at some point there would be a last interview, but the n.t victim would Kenneth Starr Michael Reiter reignee.4"="0:tra=rd,. kept getting bigger and bigger,” Rec.y said. Blaming the victims • By then, word had gotten back to Epstein from somc of the girls that they had bEeplrhaitrie7f=dPac;er Alan Dershcnvitz. "Alan Dershowitz flew down and met privately with Krischet, Recarey said. "And the shenanigans that happened, I don't think Alan D.... I'vc ever seen or heard of before." Police reports show that Epstein, private investigators attempted to conduct inter- views while posing as cops; that they picked through Reiter, trash in search of dirt to discredit him; and that the private inv.tiga- tors were accused of following the girls and their families. In one case, the father of one girl claimed hc had been run off!. road by a private int,Traat.-PuIetrnia',=;re dated and frightened by Epstein and Sarah 1.11en, the millionaire's assistant and alleged scheduler of massage, who warned them not to talk to police, according to the police report. Dershowitz, in an interview with the Her- ald, said he .d nothing to do with gathering background on the girls — or in directing stitrztrilifitInw the police, or t. girls and "I'm not an investigator. My only job was I:iv:oast:1nd try thc mse when it comes to Ile nevertheless convinced Krischer that the girls would not be credible on the witn.s stand, according to Reiter and Recarecy...n doTsslicercskotil=1:117ntgeaftfi7rst to shPJ,:d that Epstein, accusers had troubled pasts. Dershowitz met with Krischer and Recarey, sharing with them the results of an inv.tiga- tion into onc of the girls whom Dershowitz described as "an accomplished drama stu- dent" who hurled profaniti. at his investiga- tor at "a furious pace." "Our investigation had discovered at least one of her websites and I am enelming some examples ... t. site goes on to detail, includ- f:„seetlt.i.°1:,""el,;Id'ated letter to Recarey. He also disputed the claim that onc of the defense tcam's private investi- gators .d misrepr.cnted himself as a police officer. Recarcy stood his ground. “Fl is attomeys showed us a MySpacc page whcrc one of the girls was holding a beer in her hand, and they said, 'oh look, she is underage drinking,— Recarey recalled. "Well, tell me what teenager dtresn't? DOes that mean she isn't a victim because she drank a beer? Basically. what you're telling me is the only victim of a sexual battery could be a nuKrischer and the lead state Prese.for . the case, Assistant State Attorney Lanna Be- lohlavek, beg= to dodge Remrey and Reiter, rlitrf:t"Ona:jdtp=lndly toe"' dIgerecir and Recarey said. "Early on, it became clear that things had changed, from ICrisc.r saying, 'we'll put this guy awtiy fOr tO 'these 911 the reasons why we aren't going to prosccutc Reiter said. Krischcr, v.o is now retired and in private rittafni 'Helm% d ITUkteh t also did not respond to an email sent to her office. "It bmame apparent to me that some of our evidence was being leaked to Epstein, lawyers.hwho began to question everything tRtzesailt,i1. in our probable cause affidavit,- =hit! tomorrow: Searching Epstein,