President Donald Trump’s first secretary of Labor will answer questions from House investigators next month about his involvement in the Jeffrey Epstein case.
House Oversight Chair James Comer said Monday that Alex Acosta, who led the Labor Department from 2017 to 2019, has agreed to sit for a transcribed interview with the panel on Sept. 19.
As U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Acosta signed off on a 2008 deal that allowed Epstein to plead guilty to a single state charge, ending a long-running FBI investigation without federal charges. The deal is now widely seen as being unduly favorable to Epstein, who was later charged with federal sex trafficking charges and subsequently died by suicide in Justice Department custody.
Acosta defended the 2008 deal after the federal charges were filed in 2019, while he was serving in the first Trump administration. The prior deal, he said, forced Epstein to register as a sex offender and put the public on notice of his behavior.
Comer separately said Monday that his panel is probing the federal government’s possible mishandling of the Epstein case and has issued a subpoena to the Epstein estate “for documents and communications in its possession, custody, or control in unredacted form.”
Republican leaders have been scrambling to head off growing demands from rank-and-file House members for the Trump administration to release more information about the Epstein case.
So far, lawmakers have gotten their hands on scant new information about the case. Congress reconvenes next week, with Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) planning to quickly push forward with an effort to force a vote on a bill that would compel the Justice Department to release its entire Epstein-related trove of documents.