By Noreen Marcus, FloridaBulldog.org
The Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking scandal, a political tsunami that threatens to swamp Donald Trump’s presidency, can be condensed into three words in a legal document.
The language appears in a 2007 deal Epstein’s lawyers made with the office of Alex Acosta, then the U.S. Attorney for South Florida. Epstein would plead guilty in state court to two felonies: solicitation of prostitution and procuring a person under the age of 18 for prostitution.
In exchange, he and four of his female employees that authorities said aided his scheme, plus “any potential co-conspirators,” would receive immunity from federal sex-trafficking charges punishable by up to 45 years in prison.
Those three words – bolded for emphasis – remain hugely relevant today. They provide a legal shield for silent, nameless criminals to hide behind while Epstein survivors publicly relive their anguish in hopes of finally inspiring some kind of justice.
The survivors and their bipartisan allies succeeded at getting Congress to pass and Trump to sign the Jeffrey Epstein Transparency Act in November. But the botched rollout of millions of FBI documents is stirring doubts that well-connected individuals in Epstein’s network of sex abusers will ever be punished.
“It’s degrading our society to continue to allow these predators and perpetrators to get away with harming so many people,” survivor Teresa Helm wrote in an X post.
After the Epstein immunity deal became public knowledge, outside prosecutors were astounded — they said they’d never seen such a lopsided giveaway, a quid without a pro quo. Normally a suspect who wants immunity offers something in return, like testimony against a higher-up in a crime family.
“I have never heard of a case where an NPA [non-prosecution agreement] extended to people who haven’t been investigated or charged yet,” former Miami federal prosecutor Richard Gregorie told Florida Bulldog. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
Jeffrey Epstein did easy time — 13 months in a suspiciously informal work-release program. His personal immunity ended in 2019 with a new sex-trafficking indictment, this time in New York, but he escaped accountability. Authorities said he committed suicide in his jail cell.
As the enormity of Epstein’s criminal enterprise came to light and brave survivors emerged publicly, calls for outing his accomplices multiplied. The public demanded to know how Epstein secured the extraordinary 2007 immunity deal for himself and his inner circle of predators.
In 2019 the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) explored the deal-making behind the immunity agreement. Investigators questioned why prosecutors had prevented Epstein’s victims from learning about the deal in real time, an obvious violation of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA), the federal law that promises crime victims notice and agency.
By the time Epstein’s victims got word of the deal, they couldn’t attempt to rescind or even to modify its contents.
IMMUNITY’S STILL AN ISSUE
The OPR’s November 2020 report seemed to clear Acosta and his entire office, including Ann Marie Villafana, the lead Epstein prosecutor. Still, by then Acosta had resigned as U.S. Labor Secretary and Villafana had moved over to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Phoenix.
(She has returned to Florida. After a two-year stint back at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Florida, Villafana is a corporate consultant and lawyer in Palm Beach Gardens, according to her LinkedIn bio and Florida Bar listing.)
Villafana told OPR investigators she had agreed to the co-conspirators’ immunity clause because it seemed harmless. At the time, she believed Epstein’s crimes were solely his own “dirty little secret,” she said.
Now, however, Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell is claiming the immunity clause invalidates her 20-year sentence for sex trafficking underage girls. Her ongoing appeal is hampered by the fact she was tried and convicted in New York and judges have said the immunity deal applies only in Florida — if at all.
No one else has been charged. Last February, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Epstein’s list of clients for underage girls was “sitting on my desk.” But in September, FBI Director Kash Patel told House and Senate committees the Epstein file contains “no credible information” others were involved in the sex-trafficking scheme, meaning Epstein had no indictable clients.
The co-conspirator immunity problem also figures into a civil lawsuit filed for Epstein’s victims. It came up in April 2020 when an 11th Circuit appellate judge expressed concerns about who exactly the 2007 deal was designed to protect.
So the “any potential co-conspirators” clause is proving to be consequential — and potentially harmful.
“Maybe anyone who was too close to it thought it was innocuous, but when you’re not part of the case you see that it looks pretty bad,” said former Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg, who stressed he’s not accusing anyone of corruption.
A JUDGE’S ACCUSATION
In context, the immunity-for-all provision looks worse than pretty bad.
Epstein victims represented by Fort Lauderdale attorney Bradley Edwards filed In re: Courtney Wild in West Palm Beach U.S. District Court to enforce their rights under federal law. The 2008 lawsuit alleged prosecutors made sure the victims knew nothing about the 2007 immunity deal, a violation of the CVRA.
Over a decade of hard-fought litigation ended in defeat for the victims. The 11th Circuit appeals court decided in 2020 that because Acosta never indicted Jeffrey Epstein, the victims had no rights to vindicate.
Atlanta Judge Frank Mays Hull dissented in a 60-page opinion that showed prosecutors knew what they were doing when they lulled the victims into believing their rights would be honored. The prosecutors worked closely with Epstein’s lawyers to shut the victims out of the bargaining process, she wrote.
The court majority “eviscerates crime victims’ CVRA rights and makes the Epstein case a poster-child for an entirely different justice system for crime victims of wealthy defendants,” Hull wrote.
She quoted from a revealing email that suggests prosecutors and defense lawyers shared the goal of protecting certain unidentified people. On Sept. 16, 2007, a week before the immunity deal was signed, Villafana sent the email to one of Epstein’s high-powered lawyers, Jay Lefkowitz of Kirkland & Ellis in New York.
“I would prefer not to highlight for the [state court] judge all of the crimes and all of the other persons that we could charge,” Villafana’s email states.
What crimes and which other persons?
Villafana told the OPR investigators she believed Epstein acted alone, so it would be harmless to include the “all potential co-conspirators” language in the immunity deal.
Florida Bulldog emailed Villafana and asked her to explain the contradiction. She didn’t respond.
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