Jeffrey Epstein Became a Government Informant as Part of Sweetheart Plea Deal
THE ART OF THE DEAL
Records show he was key witness in trial of two Bear Stearns execs during 2008 financial crisis.
Rick Friedman/Getty
In exchange for a sweetheart plea deal that buried dozens of allegations by underage girls of sexual abuse at his Palm Beach, Florida, mansion, disgraced hedge-fund manager Jeffrey Epstein provided federal investigators with “unspecified information,” according to records cited in a Tuesday report from the Miami Herald. Epstein, who has long faced allegations of coercion and sex trafficking, could have faced life in prison in 2007, when his lawyer met with Miami federal prosecutor Alexander Acosta, who is now President Trump’s labor secretary. The pair struck a deal that only required Epstein to serve 13 months in a county jail and shuttered an FBI probe into his alleged crimes. But as part of that deal, according to records cited by the Herald, Epstein provided “valuable consideration”—in other words, critical information—to federal investigators. There’s no direct evidence of what that information was, but records show that at around the same time, Epstein was considered to be a crucial witness during the trial of two Bear Stearns executives who faced allegations of corporate securities fraud during the 2008 financial crisis.
