Alexander Acosta and the sweetheart deal
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Alexander Acosta was the US attorney in Florida who agreed the 2006 non-prosecution deal for Jeffrey Epstein, and later served as Labor Secretary in Donald Trump's first term. In John Kiriakou's account of the case, Acosta is not the culprit but the loose thread.

Acosta has said he was ordered to give the deal. Kiriakou's argument is about who can issue such an order: the only person in the system who can direct a US attorney is the attorney general. The attorney general at the time was Alberto Gonzales, a man Kiriakou describes as legendary for his powerlessness and unsuitedness to the office, who "didn't brush his hair in the morning without permission from the president or the vice president."

That leaves the question Kiriakou says nobody has ever answered: "was it Bush? Was it Cheney? Who was it that was close enough to Epstein that he would want to swoop in and save Epstein by giving him the sweetheart deal?"

In another telling he tightens the chain by one link and supplies the measure of what was given away. There were, he says, only two people who could have ordered the deal, the attorney general, or the president, and the first cannot be considered in isolation from the second: "the attorney general is not going to order a sweetheart deal for a convicted child sex offender without clearing it with the president." That leaves the question he puts as an incredulity rather than an accusation: "why in the world would George W. Bush order house arrest for somebody who was convicted of a crime that carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison?"

He also parses the reported justification into its possible readings rather than treating it as self-explanatory. Acosta was told to give the deal "because, quote, he's intelligence, unquote", and Kiriakou lays out what that could mean: that Epstein was American intelligence; that he was Israeli intelligence and "the Americans don't want to risk pissing off the Israelis for some reason"; or simply that he "has something over somebody."

He extends Acosta the benefit of the doubt on the point that matters: Acosta apparently genuinely does not know the answer, because his order came down from the attorney general, and Kiriakou says he believes him. What Acosta reported being told about Epstein is the line that hangs over the rest, that "he belonged to intelligence."

Kiriakou's own position on what that meant is that Epstein was an Israeli agent of some sort, an assessment he says the released material has vindicated, adding that if anything he underestimated the extent of Epstein's contact with intelligence services.

Walking the chain upward

Asked in 2026 about the name missing from the Epstein Files Transparency Act disclosures, who was responsible for the lenient 2007,08 sentence, Kiriakou answered "I think it's 100% intelligence related," and then reasoned upward from Acosta's own account rather than speculating sideways.

The starting point is Acosta's statement that the order to give Epstein a sweetheart sentence "came from the top," and that asked why, "all he said was: intelligence." From there the question becomes organisational: "who has authority over a US attorney? Frankly, the only person who has direct authority over a US attorney is the attorney general. At the time, that was Alberto Gonzales."

Kiriakou does not stop there, because he does not think Gonzales capable of it: "Alberto Gonzales, God bless him, was a lightweight. It wasn't up to Alberto Gonzales. So who was above Alberto Gonzales? It was the president and the vice president." He declines to pick between them and leaves the questions open, "was it George W. Bush that ordered this? If so, why? Was it Dick Cheney? If so, why?", ending on the entitlement rather than the answer: "I think we have a right to know."

See also

- Jeffrey Epstein
- Alan Dershowitz
- David Boies
- Les Wexner
