In September 17, 2025 Senate hearing featuring FBI Director Kash Patel didn’t shed a ton of light on the substance of the Jeffrey Epstein files. But it was hugely significant in another way: It signaled a new political effort by the Trump administration to ascribe blame. And the target is none other than a former top Trump administration official – one whom Trump very notably once defended. Testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patel seemed to make a point to fault Alexander Acosta, who was US attorney in Florida in the late 2000s and cut a nonprosecution agreement with Epstein. That deal came during the George W. Bush administration, years before Trump in his first term picked Acosta as labor secretary.
00:00Mr. Acosta allowed Mr. Epstein to enter into a plea agreement where he served weekend jails for trafficking minor women.
00:08He also was allowed to leave jail to go home on the weekends.
00:12Plus, he allowed a non-prosecution agreement to be signed as part of that plea deal, prohibiting future investigations.
00:19We are working with Congress to produce more than any administration ever has material on Epstein.
00:24And I welcome the challenge to tell us that we are not being as transparent as the law allows.
00:27We even went to court and asked the judges to lift those prosecutorial agreements and to lift those court order seals.
00:33And they denied us three times.
00:35I have produced 33,000 pages in seven years to this Congress and will continue to do so.
00:40I'm dedicated to restoring the trust and the mission and the integrity of the FBI.
00:44And we cannot do so without congressional oversight.
00:46And I promise you I will continue to do so.
00:49On the Epstein case, the original sin on the Epstein case was how it was handled by Mr. Acosta when he first brought the case in 2006, 7 and 8.
00:59The original case had a very limited search warrant, had a very limited search window, had a very limited investigative window.
01:06I was not there when those search warrants and that investigation was launched.
01:09I would not have done it that way.
01:11They were limited to only three to four years of investigations from 97 to approximately 2001 and 2002 to 2005.
01:17But Mr. Acosta allowed Mr. Epstein to enter into a plea agreement where he served weekend jails for trafficking minor women.
01:25He also was allowed to leave jail to go home on the weekends.
01:29Plus, he allowed a non-prosecution agreement to be signed as part of that plea deal, prohibiting future investigations from that prosecution and from that evidence and prohibiting the collection of further material.
01:42That is the original sin.
01:43We are working with Congress to produce, more than any administration ever has, material on Epstein.
01:48And I welcome the challenge to tell us that we are not being as transparent as the law allows.
01:52We even went to court and asked the judges to lift those prosecutorial agreements and to lift those court order seals, and they denied us three times.
02:00Congress is welcome to do the same and join the fight.
02:02And I'd lastly like to focus on operation that the president led in D.C.
02:08Because of this, we are taking this fight in D.C. to every single city across the country.
02:12Director, Hotel, you and I have not had the opportunity to meet.
02:16And alas, you fail to respond to the eight oversight letters I've sent you over the last seven months.
02:21So we do have a lot of questions piling up for you.
02:24But I want to start with a word of praise.
02:26The first FBI director was J. Edgar Hoover, who steadfastly refused to hire women, African Americans, and other minorities as agents.
02:35And although he was a closeted homosexual who lived in domestic partnership for decades with Clyde Tolson, he also participated in anti-gay crusades.
02:45He aggressively promoted what we would today call white Christian nationalism, and he would undoubtedly be turning over in his grave to see as one of his successors, a first generation Indian American and a proud Hindu.
02:57So I congratulate you on being a breakthrough in this sense and being a beneficiary of the civil rights movement that opened up the FBI and the federal workforce to lots of people who never would have been hired in its first decades.
03:09Alas, you share J. Edgar Hoover's dangerous obsession with blind loyalty over professionalism and effective public policy.
03:18For Hoover, it was blind loyalty to him in keeping his secrets.
03:21For you, it's blind loyalty to Donald Trump in keeping his secrets.
03:26During your confirmation, it was widely noted on all sides that your primary qualification was your unwavering loyalty to Trump.
03:32Unlike other directors, you had no work experience at the FBI, but you had made over a thousand media and political appearances in support of Trump's campaign.
03:42Your second confirmation vote was 51 to 49, the closest in history, with your opponents warning you were not qualified and had no interest in actually developing the qualifications for the job.
03:53I hoped that they were wrong.
03:56Alas, they were not.
03:57While most other new FBI directors drew on their experience as FBI agents, you didn't have that.
04:04But you did write a picture book trilogy for children ages five and up based on your experience clashing with President Trump's political enemies.
04:15In your book, you describe your literary alter ego, Cash the Knight, as a wacky, easily bored wizard carrying out King Donald's vengeance
04:25by driving his enemies out of the kingdom.
04:27In the books, King Donald is besieged by the evil Hillary Queen town, but saved in the end by Cash.
04:34Then Cash goes on to catch mules who are stealing the 2020 election for the great King Donald from Sleepy Joe.
04:41And then in the third book, Cash takes down the dragon of the jalapenos nicknamed the DOJ.
04:48Your supporters had hoped that you would graduate from imagining yourself a romantic fairytale knight to actually running America's premier federal law enforcement agency.
04:59Alas, just as we've learned how dangerous it is to put a science-denying anti-vaxxer in charge of our public health,
05:07we've learned how dangerous it is to name as director of the FBI a man who thinks of himself as a fairytale knight
05:13who keeps a fire-breathing dragon named DOJ at home to forcibly drive villains out of the kingdom.
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