{"schema_version":1,"citation_url":"https://567politics.com/news/epstein-2007-non-prosecution-deal-acosta-menchel-reinhart-oversight-report-november-2026","title":"Epstein's 2007 deal: secret immunity, missing hard drives and a prosecutor's undisclosed ties","description":"House Oversight Republicans say Miami prosecutors signed Epstein's non-prosecution deal too early and under conflicts of interest. Alexander Acosta told the committee the decision was his responsibility.","author":"567 Politics staff","publisher":"567politics","date_published":"2026-11-10T22:08:57.507604Z","date_modified":"2026-11-10T22:13:31.865618Z","body_markdown":"The 2007 deal that let Jeffrey Epstein avoid federal charges was signed while prosecutors still knew evidence was missing, before key witnesses were interviewed, and under a senior prosecutor whose ties to Epstein's defense team were never disclosed. That is the conclusion of the House Oversight Committee's Republican majority in its [final Epstein report](https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/A-Review-of-the-Federal-Governments-Mishandling-of-the-Jeffrey-Epstein-and-Ghislaine-Maxwell-Criminal-Investigations_OGR-Maj-Report.pdf), released Nov. 10.\n\nThe report calls the non-prosecution agreement \"wholly inappropriate\" and says it \"undoubtedly allowed\" Epstein's abuse to continue. It also faults the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office for a work-release arrangement that let Epstein leave jail for up to 12 hours a day, six days a week. Former U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, who approved the deal, told the committee it was his responsibility and that the state proved \"an unreliable partner on multiple levels.\"\n\nThis is part of a five-story series. Read the [overview of the report and the Democratic response](/news/house-oversight-republican-epstein-report-findings-recommendations-november-2026).\n\n## The deal in brief\n\nPalm Beach police opened their investigation in March 2005 after reports that Epstein had abused underage girls at his home. The FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida opened a parallel federal case. Instead of indicting Epstein, the office signed a non-prosecution agreement in 2007. Epstein pleaded guilty in June 2008 to two state prostitution charges, one involving a minor. He was sentenced to 18 months and released after about 13, in July 2009, with credit for good behavior.\n\n```diagram\ntype: timeline\ntitle: From police inquiry to early release\nsource: [House Oversight Committee majority report](https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/A-Review-of-the-Federal-Governments-Mishandling-of-the-Jeffrey-Epstein-and-Ghislaine-Maxwell-Criminal-Investigations_OGR-Maj-Report.pdf)\n---\nMarch 2005: Palm Beach police open an inquiry into abuse of underage girls\nOct. 20, 2005: Police search Epstein's Palm Beach home and find equipment removed\nJuly 2006: Epstein charged with one state count; FBI opens a federal case\n2007: Federal prosecutors sign a non-prosecution agreement\nJune 2008: Epstein pleads guilty to two state charges and gets 18 months\nNov. 24, 2008: Acosta tells Epstein's lawyer work release is a material breach\nJuly 22, 2009: Epstein released after about 13 months\n2019: A federal judge rules prosecutors violated victims' rights law\n```\n\nThe agreement did more than spare Epstein. It promised that the Southern District of Florida would not prosecute four named women, including his assistants Sarah Kellen and Lesley Groff, or any unnamed \"potential co-conspirators.\" The report says the women named in it were not told. Kellen told the committee she learned her name was in it only after it became public. \"The Federal Government of the United States branded me a criminal in a secret deal with my own abuser, without ever once speaking to me,\" she said.\n\nThe Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility reviewed the deal in 2020. It found \"poor judgment\" but no professional misconduct by Acosta, and it did not find the agreement legally invalid. The committee does not dispute those findings. It argues the deal was premature and that the process behind it was exposed to conflicts of interest that the department's review did not fully examine.\n\n## The prosecutor at the center\n\nThe report's sharpest criticism falls on Matthew Menchel, then chief of the office's criminal division and, according to the department's 2020 review, the first person in the office to suggest resolving the case with a non-prosecution agreement. Acosta told the committee he gave Menchel \"quite a bit of deference.\"\n\nThe report raises three concerns about Menchel. First, it says Menchel had a past romantic relationship with Lilly Ann Sanchez, his former deputy, who later joined Epstein's defense team. Acosta testified that Menchel did not recuse himself and did not tell him. \"I wish I would've been informed,\" Acosta said. \"I was not informed.\"\n\nSecond, the committee says it learned of a photograph said to show Menchel skiing with Epstein in Aspen, Colorado, in the early 2000s. The report says the committee \"has not independently confirmed the photograph's existence or authenticity.\" Acosta said he had never heard of it and that, if real, it would raise concerns.\n\nThird, the report cites estate records and files released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act showing that Menchel met, dined and spoke by phone with Epstein after the deal, once Menchel had moved to private practice. A March 2012 message, for example, shows a lunch with Menchel on Epstein's calendar. The Miami Herald reported that the firm where Menchel worked said Epstein was never a client. The report says that denial \"does not negate\" the continued contact. The report does not include a response from Menchel, and he has not been charged with any wrongdoing.\n\n## A second prosecutor's new practice\n\nThe report also questions the role of Bruce Reinhart, then an assistant U.S. attorney in the office's Palm Beach branch. Reinhart left the office on Jan. 1, 2008, and immediately began representing Epstein associates, including Kellen, several of Epstein's pilots and a former housekeeper.\n\nState corporate records cited in the report show Reinhart incorporated his law practice on Oct. 23, 2007, before he gave notice to the office. The practice listed the same West Palm Beach address as the Florida Science Foundation, an entity Epstein and his lawyer Darren Indyke set up on Nov. 1, 2007, and later used for his work release. Kellen told the committee that Epstein \"found him, he hired him, he paid him\" to represent her in a civil deposition.\n\nAcosta said he knew Reinhart had left to work for Epstein while the case was pending, but did not know about the incorporation date. He said he could not say whether Reinhart had learned anything about the case through \"hallway discussions\" in the small Palm Beach office. Reinhart was not part of the core team, according to Acosta. The report says the facts \"raise the appearance of a serious conflict of interest\" but does not find that Reinhart passed information to Epstein. Reinhart later became a federal magistrate judge.\n\n## Evidence the office left behind\n\nThe report argues that prosecutors closed the case while important evidence was still missing. When Palm Beach police searched Epstein's home on Oct. 20, 2005, they reported that computers, hard drives and security camera footage had been \"removed.\" Federal prosecutors believed a particular person had the equipment, according to the department's review, but dropped the effort after pushback from Epstein's lawyers and the push to finish the deal.\n\nKellen told the committee that Epstein phoned another assistant and told her \"to go to the house and remove the computers.\" Kellen said she herself gathered \"directories and printed photographs\" for Epstein's lawyers but did not know what they did with them. Indyke testified that he later learned private investigators held computer hard drives, but did not know how they got them.\n\nThe report also revisits a question it cannot answer: whether Epstein was warned about the search. Estate message logs show an urgent message from Sandy Berger, a former national security adviser to President Bill Clinton, on Oct. 2, 2005, 18 days before the search. Berger died in 2015. Clinton, Kellen, Groff, Indyke and Staley each told the committee they did not know whether Epstein was tipped off. The report says neither the FBI nor federal prosecutors investigated the question before signing the deal.\n\n## Witnesses no one interviewed\n\nThe committee asked a dozen people in Epstein's circle whether law enforcement had ever contacted them. Only Kellen, Groff and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said yes, and only in 2019, more than a decade after the deal.\n\nThe four women given immunity in the agreement were not interviewed before it was signed. According to Justice Department files, FBI agents tried to interview Groff at her home on Aug. 21, 2007. A file note says Epstein told her not to talk and \"reprimanded her for letting them into her home.\" Groff told the committee she called Indyke, not Epstein, and that Indyke told her not to speak without a lawyer.\n\nKellen described a 2007 encounter at the airport in St. Thomas. Two FBI agents approached her and another young woman, she said, and Epstein walked over and spoke to them himself. \"The agents were gone,\" she told the committee. Kellen said that because no one questioned her, she believed Epstein's account that he was the victim of women seeking money.\n\nAcosta also said he did not know about earlier allegations from New York and New Mexico. In his view at the time, the case was \"all local,\" which raised doubts about a federal case. The report says the office knew of allegations in other states and did not coordinate with other jurisdictions to build one.\n\n## Acosta's defense of the deal\n\nAcosta told the committee that every senior lawyer involved, including the trial prosecutor and the head of the Palm Beach office, favored a pretrial resolution. He cited concerns about witnesses' reliability and willingness to testify. If the office went to trial and lost, he said, that would signal that Epstein \"got away with it.\" A guilty plea that put him in jail and on the sex offender registry, he argued, sent the stronger signal.\n\nAsked whether prosecutors could judge the strength of the case without cooperating witnesses, flight logs or Epstein's computers, Acosta said the trial prosecutor had discretion to decide when to resolve it. \"Hindsight's 20/20,\" he said. \"In retrospect, maybe she should have done more; maybe she should not have done more.\" He also expressed regret about the deal.\n\n## Work release: 12 hours a day\n\nThe deal did not bar Epstein from work release, and the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office granted it. Under the terms described in the report, he could leave the stockade for up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, to work at the Florida Science Foundation. He traveled by private car with off-duty deputies he paid. Deputies did not have to monitor his meetings, and he visited his Palm Beach home several times.\n\nThe committee found no sign that the foundation did any legitimate work. Kellen told the committee the abuse continued after Epstein got work release. She said he called her by video from the stockade and told her to undress. Another survivor told committee members in September 2025 that Epstein abused her at the foundation's office during work release. A 2021 Florida Department of Law Enforcement review found the sheriff's office let Epstein pay the deputies guarding him.\n\nAcosta said the state attorney's office had promised continuous confinement and that his office was not told when work release was granted. On Nov. 24, 2008, he formally notified Epstein's lawyer that the work release was \"a material breach\" of the agreement. The report says the office never followed through, and no record explains why. Acosta recused himself from Epstein matters later that month. Between 2009 and 2019, the report says, no Justice Department lawyer or FBI investigator sought to reopen the case.\n\n## Survivors kept in the dark\n\nIn 2019, a federal judge ruled that prosecutors violated the Crime Victims' Rights Act by signing the deal without consulting victims, and found they had acted to \"conceal\" it. Acosta told the committee he approved a decision to stop notifying victims because the agreement let them seek money from Epstein. Prosecutors worried that telling them could let the defense attack their credibility.\n\nThe report links that secrecy to another tool it says kept victims quiet: nondisclosure agreements. It cites a 2015 agreement between billionaire Leon Black and a woman with whom he had a six-year affair. Black told the committee the deal paid her $100,000 a month for 15 years and that Epstein advised on it. Black refused to answer further questions about it, and the House voted by unanimous consent on Sept. 16 to hold him in contempt of Congress. Black's role is covered in our [story on Epstein's money and enablers](/news/epstein-enablers-leon-black-jpmorgan-amex-decoy-flights-oversight-report-november-2026).\n\n## What the committee wants changed\n\nTwo of the report's six recommendations come straight from the Florida case. It says non-prosecution agreements in sex-crime cases should require review by senior Justice Department officials and should protect victims' rights. It also says U.S. attorneys' offices should enforce conflict-of-interest rules more strictly, including more training for line prosecutors.\n\nAcosta later served as labor secretary in Trump's first term and resigned in 2019 after Epstein's federal arrest renewed scrutiny of the deal. The other parts of the series examine [the jail where Epstein died](/news/epstein-death-mcc-missed-rounds-orange-figure-oversight-report-november-2026) and [the release of the Epstein files](/news/epstein-files-release-doj-redactions-trump-democrats-oversight-report-november-2026). Earlier 567 Politics coverage examined [how former Attorney General Pam Bondi described the file release](/news/bondi-blanche-patel-epstein-files-oversight-testimony-maxwell-november-2026).","link_base":"https://567politics.com/news/epstein-2007-non-prosecution-deal-acosta-menchel-reinhart-oversight-report-november-2026","citation_guidance":"Cite citation_url. Preserve source links, dates and qualifications. date_modified is an edit date, not proof that every claim was rechecked. Third-party images and quoted material retain their own rights."}