A Republican lawmaker revealed for the first time Wednesday that there is a quasi-list of suspected clients of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein that can be compiled from a series of witness statements and other evidence gathered by the FBI.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) told the House Judiciary Committee that he thinks the FBI has the names of at least 20 people tied to Epstein, including prominent figures in the music industry, finance, politics and banking.
Massie’s statement comes as FBI Director Kash Patel testified under oath before Congress over two days of contentious hearings, during which he continued to insist that there is no “client list” and no credible evidence that Epstein trafficked underage girls to anyone other than himself.
But Massie cited files used by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York which summarize interviews with witnesses and suspects.
The lawmaker claimed those files include “one Hollywood producer worth a few 100 million dollars, one royal prince, one high-profile individual in the music industry, one very prominent banker, one high profile government official, one high profile former politician, one owner of a car company in Italy, one rock star, one magician, at least six billionaires, including a billionaire from Canada. We know these people exist in the FBI files, the files that you control.”
Patel said he asked FBI agents to review the existing files and added “any investigations that arise from any credible investigation will be brought. There have been no new materials brought to me.”
On Tuesday, Patel blamed former Miami federal prosecutor Alexander Acosta for what he called the “Original Sin” — explaining that the decision to give federal immunity to Epstein in 2008 has hampered almost every effort by the FBI and Justice Department to hold those involved in Epstein’s criminal operation accountable.
Patel, a podcaster who once called for the release of the files and helped propagate conspiracy theories about why they weren’t being made public, testified just days before Acosta is set to finally tell his side of the story before a congressional committee. On Friday, Acosta will be grilled by the House Oversight Committee in closed-door testimony for the first time since he resigned as U.S. labor secretary amid renewed scrutiny of the case.
Acosta was just 37 and a rising star in the Republican Party who had noble ambitions of becoming a U.S. Supreme Court justice when he was namedU.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida in 2005. By the time he was sworn in, the FBI was already investigating Epstein, and evidence suggested that the crimes against children and young women he committed in Palm Beach went well beyond Florida.
Now 56, Acosta has almost vanished from public life, other than appearing from time to time to discuss economic issues on the conservative TV network Newsmax, where he is also on the network’s board of directors and chair of its audit committee. The Miami Herald was unsuccessful in obtaining a comment from Newsmax, which in recent months has portrayed Acosta as a victim of the “deep state,” suggesting that Epstein and Maxwell were unfairly targeted.
Acosta still owns a $2.6 million mansion in McLean, Virginia, which he and his wife bought after being named labor secretary by President Donald Trump in 2017. Nowadays, he advises private market ventures and serves as a public speaker, according to his Newsmax bio.
A first-generation Cuban American, Acosta skipped his senior year of high school to enter Harvard a year early. Upon graduation in 1994, he worked as a law clerk for future Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito, who was then a federal appeals court judge. Acosta then took a job with the prestigious law firm Kirkland and Ellis in Washington and became a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative organization that has influenced the appointment of judges, including members of the Supreme Court.
Acosta was appointed in 2001 under the George W. Bush administration as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, and also served on the National Labor Relations Board before being appointed U.S. Attorney in Miami.
Acosta has rarely spoken about the Epstein case. To this day, he has stood firm on his decision to give Epstein a plea deal, arguing in the past that the evidence wasn’t strong enough to prosecute him on serious sex trafficking charges.
But an investigation, completed in 2020 by the Justice Department, concluded that Acosta had used “poor judgement” in resolving the case with such a lenient plea deal — one that not only gave Epstein immunity from federal charges, but also gave immunity to four co-conspirators and an unidentified number of others who were involved. Under the deal, Epstein pleaded guilty in state court to solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of a minor under 18. He was sentenced to 18 months in the county jail, but served 13 — most of it under a “work release” program which enabled him to leave prison during the day. (It was later revealed that he continued to sexually abused young women in his Palm Beach “office” while he was an inmate).
Acosta has also blamed the Palm Beach state attorney, Barry Krischer — specifically his decision early on to pursue only a misdemeanor charge and a fine against Epstein, which complicated any future federal prosecution.
Krischer called Acosta’s reasoning an attempt to “rewrite history.”
“No matter how my office resolved the state charges, the U.S. Attorney always had the ability to file his own criminal charges,” Krischer said in a statement at the time of Acosta’s resignation.
The lead line prosecutor who handled the case in Florida, Marie Villafaña, told federal investigators in 2019 that she had drawn up a 53-page draft indictment in 2007 against Epstein accusing him of sex trafficking minors while running a systemic operation using others to recruit girls. If convicted, Epstein may have served life in prison. Villafaña, who has never spoken publicly and has since resigned, told investigators she pleaded with her bosses to prosecute him — to no avail.
The DOJ’s investigation into Epstein’s plea deal also hit several roadblocks, among them: the discovery that 11 months’ worth of Acosta’s emails during the negotiations had vanished. Federal investigators blamed the gap – from May 2007 to April 2008 – on a technical glitch that they said wasn’t isolated to Acosta and had affected other federal email accounts.
The missing emails included the months and days leading up to and following October 12, 2007, when Acosta had a private breakfast meeting in Palm Beachwith Epstein’s lawyer, Jay Lefkowitz, a former Kirkland and Ellis law colleague.
The Miami Herald, in its 2018 investigation of the case, uncovered evidence suggesting that Epstein and his battery of high-priced attorneys exerted undue influence over both state and federal prosecutors. Among other lawyers hired by Epstein: former Clinton special prosecutor and Kirkland and Ellis lawyer Kenneth Starr; lawyer and friend Alan Dershowitz (who was later accused by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre of sexual abuse, though she later recanted); and Miami lawyer Lilly Anne Sanchez, who, according to the DOJ probe, had dated one of the federal prosecutors on the Epstein case, Matthew Menchel.
Emails between Epstein’s lawyers and federal prosecutors obtained by the Herald showed that Epstein’s lawyers repeatedly made demands and that federal prosecutors acquiesced each step of the way.
“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 Palm Beach. He added that he was hopeful that Acosta would abide by a promise to keep the deal confidential. By law, prosecutors were required to notify Epstein’s victims in advance of any plea agreement.
“The original sin in the Epstein case was the way it was initially brought by Mr. Acosta,” Patel told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“Mr. Acosta allowed Epstein to enter — in 2008 — to plea to a non-prosecution agreement which then the courts issued mandates and protective orders legally prohibiting anyone from ever seeing that material ever again without the permission of the court. The non-prosecution also barred future prosecutions of those involved at that time.”
A judge later ruled that the Epstein deal was illegal, but the courts ultimately ruled that it was too late to undo it.
Still, the deal’s provisions did not stop the then-U.S. attorney in New York, Geoffrey Berman, from bringing new charges against Epstein in 2019 in the wake of the Herald’s series. Epstein, 66, was arrested on July 6, 2019 on federal charges of sex trafficking minors. A month later, Epstein was found hanging in his cell. The medical examiner in New York ruled his death a suicide, although Epstein’s brother, a private forensic pathologist he hired and Epstein’s lawyers have said they don’t believe Epstein killed himself.
Prosecutors did arrest Epstein’s former girlfriend, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted on sex trafficking charges in 2021 and is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence. She is appealing her conviction to the Supreme Court, and part of her argument is that she is covered by the immunity clause in the 2008 agreement, even though she was not named.
Former attorney general William Barr testified for the Oversight Committee under a subpoena last month that he was confident Epstein’s death was a suicide. He also disputed rumors that Epstein had any ties to intelligence agencies.
Barr, who worked for the CIA while in law school in the 1970s, said the notion that Epstein was working for intelligence was “dubious.”
“Many American businessmen who have foreign contacts sometimes will talk to intelligence agencies and provide information to them,” Barr said. “And the CIA has a unit that goes around and talks to people who are well-connected and asks them questions.”
Tag Archives: Claire Healy
Miami Herald: Exclusive: Hundreds at Alligator Alcatraz have no criminal charges, Miami Herald learns
Hundreds of immigrants with no criminal charges in the United States are being held at Alligator Alcatraz, a detention facility state and federal officials have characterized as a place where “vicious” and “deranged psychopaths” are sent before they get deported, records obtained by the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times show.
Mixed among the detainees accused and convicted of crimes are more than 250 people who are listed as having only immigration violations but no criminal convictions or pending charges in the United States. The data is based on a list of more than 700 people who are either being held under tents and in chain link cells at Florida’s pop-up detention center in the Everglades or appear slated for transfer there.
A third of the detainees have criminal convictions. Their charges range from attempted murder to illegal re-entry to traffic violations. Hundreds of others only have pending charges. The records do not disclose the nature of the alleged offenses, and reporters have not independently examined each individual’s case.
The information — subject to change as the population of the facility fluctuates — suggests that scores of migrants without criminal records have been targeted in the state and federal dragnet to catch and deport immigrants living illegally in Florida.
Nationally, nearly half of detainees in ICE custody as of late June were being held for immigration violations and did not have a criminal conviction or charge, according to data from Syracuse University. Polls have shown that American voters support the deportation of criminals but are less supportive of the arrest and detention of otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants. South Florida’s congressional representatives have called on the Trump administration to be more compassionate in its efforts to round up and deport immigrants with status issues.
“That place is supposedly for the worst criminals in the U.S.,” said Walter Jara, the nephew of a 56-year-old Nicaraguan man taken to the facility following a traffic stop in Palm Beach County. The list obtained by the Herald/Times states that his uncle, Denis Alcides Solis Morales, has immigration violations and makes no mention of convictions or pending criminal charges. Jara said his uncle arrived here legally in 2023 under a humanitarian parole program, and has a pending asylum case.
Reporters sent the list to officials at the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In a statement, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the absence of a criminal charge in the United States doesn’t mean migrants detained at the site have clean hands.
“Many of the individuals that are counted as ‘non-criminals’ are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more; they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.,” McLaughlin told the Herald/Times. “Further, every single one of these individuals committed a crime when they came into this country illegally. It is not an accurate description to say they are ‘non-criminals.’”
McLaughlin said the Trump administration is “putting the American people first by removing illegal aliens who pose a threat to our communities” and said “70% of ICE arrests have been of criminal illegal aliens with convictions or pending charges.”
She added that the state of Florida oversees the facility, not ICE, an argument echoed in court by Thomas P. Giles, a top official involved in enforcement and removal operations.
“The ultimate decision of who to detain” at Alligator Alcatraz “belongs to Florida,” he wrote as part of the federal government’s response to a lawsuit challenging the detention facility on environmental grounds.
A spokesperson for ICE referred reporters to Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, which oversees the detention facility. The Florida agency did not respond to a request for comment.
The records offer a glimpse into who is being sent to Alligator Alcatraz. The network of trailers and tents, built on an airstrip off of U.S. Highway 41, has been operating for a little more than a week. It is already housing about 750 immigrant detainees, a figure that state officials shared with Democratic state Sen. Carlos Guillermo-Smith, one of several Florida lawmakers who toured the site on Saturday afternoon.
The records obtained by the Herald/Times show detainees are from roughly 40 countries around the world. Immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala and Cuba made up about half the list. Ages range from 18 to 73. One is listed as being from the United States. Reporters were unable to locate his family or attorney.
Lawmakers who visited the facility Saturday said they saw detainees wearing wristbands, which state officials explained were meant to classify the severity of their civil or criminal violations. The colors included yellow, orange and red — with yellow being less severe infractions and red meaning more severe offenses, said state Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando.
When the detention facility opened on July 1, President Donald Trump visited the site and said it would soon house “some of the most vicious people on the planet.” He and Gov. Ron DeSantis have said the detention center is creating more space to house undocumented immigrants who otherwise would have to be released due to a lack of beds.
The state has refused to make public a roster of detainees at Alligator Alcatraz, instead offering selective information about who is being detained there. On Friday, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier’s office released the names of six men convicted of crimes to Fox News, and later to the Herald/Times upon request. The charges against the men — all included on the list obtained by the Herald/Times — ranged from murder to burglary.
“This group of murderers, rapists, and gang members are just a small sample of the deranged psychopaths that Florida is helping President Trump and his administration remove from our country,” Uthmeier’s spokesman, Jeremy Redfern, said in a statement.
One of those men is Jose Fortin, a 46-year-old from Honduras who was arrested in 2017 on attempted murder charges. Records show Fortin was deported to his home country in August 2019. A month later, he re-entered the country illegally. Border patrol agents picked him up in Texas.
Another man identified as a detainee by Uthmeier’s office, Luis Donaldo Corado, was convicted of burglary and petty theft after he was accused of being a “peeping tom” — watching a woman through her apartment window in Coral Gables. And Eddy Lopez Jemot, a 57-year-old Cuban man, was accused of killing a woman and setting her house on fire in Key Largo in 2017. The state dropped homicide charges against him in a plea deal this year and convicted him of arson.
But other detainees left off the attorney general’s list face lesser charges — such as traffic violations, according to attorneys and family members. An attorney told the Herald/Times her client was detained by federal immigration agents after a routine-check in at an ICE field office. Some are asylum seekers.
Solís Morales, the 56-year-old Nicaraguan, ended up in Alligator Alcatraz after he was unexpectedly detained on his way to a construction job in Palm Beach County on July 1, according to Jara, his nephew. He was a passenger in a Ford F-150 when the driver was pulled over by the Florida Highway Patrol for an unsecured load, Jara told the Herald/Times on Saturday.
Solís Morales arrived in the United States from Nicaragua in 2023 under humanitarian parole and has a pending asylum case, Jara said.
Miami immigration attorney Regina de Moraes said she’s representing a 37-year-old Brazilian man being held at Alligator Alcatraz who entered the United States lawfully on a tourist visa in 2022 and then applied for asylum, which is pending.
She said the man, who has a five-year work permit and owns a solar panel business in the Orlando area, was arrested on a DUI charge in 2024. While he was attending a probation hearing on June 3, he was detained by the Orange County Sheriff’s office, which is participating in a federal immigration program known as 287(g). He was transferred from there to Alligator Alcatraz on Thursday, according to information provided to her by the man’s sister.
De Moraes, a seasoned immigration lawyer, said she doesn’t understand why the Brazilian man was transferred to the state-operated detention facility in the Everglades. She asked the Herald/Times not to identify her client.
“He’s not subject to mandatory detention and he’s not subject to removal because he has a pending asylum application,” de Moraes told the Herald/Times. “He has one DUI and he’s not a threat to others. This is ridiculous. This is a waste of time and money. … He’s not the kind of person they should be picking up.”
“They should be picking up people with sexual battery or armed robbery records,” de Moraes said.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article310541810.html