Alexander Acosta

Rene Alexander Acosta (born January 16, 1969) is an American attorney and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the National Labor Relations Board, and later served as the assistant attorney general for civil rights and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida. He is a former dean of Florida International University College of Law. He is widely known for offering a controversial plea deal to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, granting immunity from all federal criminal charges to Epstein. As part of the plea deal, Epstein served 13 months in a minimum-security county jail. He was also allowed to leave the facility up to 12 hours a day.

In 2005, police in Palm Beach, Florida, began investigating Epstein after a parent reported that Epstein had sexually abused her 14-year-old daughter, and in 2008, Acosta approved the aforementioned plea deal.

From 2017 to 2019, Alexander Acosta served as the 27th United States secretary of labor. President Donald Trump nominated Acosta to be Labor Secretary on February 16, 2017, and he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 27, 2017. After Epstein's arrest in July 2019 on sex trafficking charges, Acosta faced criticism for his role in the 2008 non-prosecution agreement. He resigned from the Trump administration on July 19 and was replaced by Eugene Scalia. Since March of 2025, Acosta has been a member of the board of directors of Newsmax and serves as its Audit Committee chair.

Early life

Acosta is the only son of Cuban immigrants. He is a native of Miami, Florida, where he attended the Gulliver Schools. Acosta received a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Harvard College in 1990, and received a Juris Doctor degree cum laude from Harvard Law School 1994. He is the first member of his family to graduate from college.

Early career (1994–2001)

Following law school, Acosta served as a law clerk to Samuel Alito, then a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, from 1994 to 1995. Acosta then worked at the office of the law firm Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in employment and labor issues. While in Washington, Acosta taught classes on employment law, disability-based discrimination law, and civil rights law at the George Mason University School of Law. Acosta was a member of the Board of Trustees of Gulliver Schools, where he served a past term as board chairman.

George W. Bush administration (2001–2005)

Acosta served in four presidentially appointed, U.S. Senate-confirmed positions in the George W. Bush administration. From December 2001 to December 2002, he served as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. From December 2002 to August 2003, he was a member of the National Labor Relations Board for which he participated in or authored more than 125 opinions.

Then, he became Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division on August 22, 2003, where he was known for increasing federal prosecutions against human trafficking. Acosta authorized Federal intervention in an Oklahoma religious liberties case to help assure the right to wear hijab in public school, and worked with Mississippi authorities to reopen the investigation of the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black youth whose abduction and murder helped spark the civil rights movement. He was the first Hispanic to serve as Assistant Attorney General.

While leading the Civil Rights Division, Acosta allowed his predecessor, Bradley Schlozman, to continue to make decisions on hiring. A report by the inspector general and the Office of Professional Responsibility later found that Schlozman illegally gave preferential treatment to conservatives and made false statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Those findings were relayed to the office of the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, but Schlozman was not prosecuted. While it put the primary responsibility on Schlozman, the report also concluded that Acosta "did not sufficiently supervise Schlozman" and that "in light of indications [he and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Sheldon Bradshaw] had about Schlozman's conduct and judgment, they failed to ensure that Schlozman's hiring and personnel decisions were based on proper considerations."

U.S. attorney for Southern District of Florida (2005–2009)

In 2005, Acosta was appointed as the U.S. attorney for Southern District of Florida, where his office successfully prosecuted the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the terrorism suspect José Padilla, the founders of the Cali Cartel, and Charles McArther Emmanuel, the son of Liberia's former leader. The district also targeted white collar crime, prosecuting several bank-related cases, including one against Swiss bank UBS. The case resulted in UBS paying $780 million in fines, and for the first time in history, the bank provided the United States with the names of individuals who were using secret Swiss bank accounts to avoid U.S. federal income taxes.

Other notable cases during his tenure include the corruption prosecution of Palm Beach County Commission chairman Tony Masilotti, Palm Beach County commissioner Warren Newell, Palm Beach County commissioner Mary McCarty, and Broward sheriff Ken Jenne; the conviction of Cali Cartel founders Miguel and Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, for the importation of 200,000 kilos of cocaine, which resulted in a $2.1 billion forfeiture; and the white-collar crime prosecutions of executives connected to Hamilton Bank. Acosta also emphasized health care fraud prosecutions. Under Acosta's leadership the district prosecuted more than 700 individuals, responsible for a total of more than $2 billion in Medicare fraud.

Jeffrey Epstein case

In August 2007, Acosta's office entered into negotiations with Jeffrey Epstein about a plea agreement. On September 24, 2007, Epstein signed a non-prosecution agreement, a day before the prosecutor in the case was prepared to indict him. Over the subsequent months, Epstein sought to negotiate the terms of the agreement and pressured Acosta to remove Marie Villafaña, the prosecutor on the case. In 2008, as U.S. attorney, Acosta approved a federal non-prosecution agreement, a secret agreement that would later be unsuccessfully challenged in court for violating the Crime Victims' Rights Act and was cited as a defense in the case of Ghislaine Maxwell, with Epstein.

Source of controversy

In March 2005, the Palm Beach Police Department began a 13-month undercover investigation of Epstein, including a search of his home, based on reports that he was involved with sex trafficking of minors. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigation resulted in a 53-page indictment in June 2007. Acosta, who was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, agreed to a plea deal, to grant immunity from all federal criminal charges to Epstein, along with four named co-conspirators and any unnamed "potential co-conspirators". That agreement "essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein's sex crimes". At the time, this halted the investigation and sealed the indictment.

Renewed interest

In 2017, Acosta was nominated for U.S. Secretary of Labor by Donald Trump. His handling of the Epstein case was discussed as part of his confirmation hearing. On November 28, 2018, as rumors circulated that Acosta was being considered as a possible successor to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Miami Herald published an investigation detailing Acosta's role in the Epstein case. That story revealed the extent of collaboration between federal prosecutors and Epstein's attorneys in their efforts to keep victims from learning of the plea deal. The Miami Herald described an email from Epstein's attorney after his off-site meeting with Acosta: "'Thank you for the commitment you made to me during our Oct. 12 meeting,' Lefkowitz wrote in a letter to Acosta after their breakfast meeting in West Palm Beach. He added that he was hopeful that Acosta would abide by a promise to keep the deal confidential. 'You ... assured me that your office would not ... contact any of the identified individuals, potential witnesses or potential civil claimants and the respective counsel in this matter,' Lefkowitz wrote." The Miami Herald reported that certain aspects of Acosta's non-prosecution agreement violated federal law, stating: "As part of the arrangement, Acosta agreed, despite a federal law to the contrary, that the deal would be kept from the victims. As a result, the non-prosecution agreement was sealed until after it was approved by the judge, thereby averting any chance that the girls—or anyone else—might show up in court and try to derail it." Victims, former prosecutors, and the retired Palm Beach police chief were among those quoted criticizing the agreement and Acosta's role in it.