CNN’s Jake Tapper repeatedly fact-checked a Republican senator on air Sunday as the lawmaker insisted that Democrats and Barack Obama’s administration were at fault for a “sweetheart” deal that allowed Jeffrey Epstein to escape his 2008 conviction on child sex charges virtually unscathed.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin appeared on CNN’s State of the Union and repeatedly claimed that a plea agreement to keep Epstein from being charged federally for child sex crimes was signed in 2009, under the Obama administration. But Epstein’s plea agreement was drafted in 2007 and signed in 2008, when he pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for sex, before Obama was even president.
“It was 2008,” Tapper corrected him, chuckling.
Tapper noted that the U.S. attorney who oversaw the non-prosecution agreement was Alex Acosta, who went on become Donald Trump’s secretary of labor during his first administration.
“It all took place in 2008,” Tapper said.
Mullin then shot back, asking “who was in office at the time?” — seemingly making the error of assuming that Obama was the president. Obama won the presidential election that year but was inaugurated in January 2009.
“In 2008, George W. Bush was the president,” Tapper said, as he was cut off by Mullin repeating his question. “George W. Bush.”
Mullin went on to insist that because the case was “sealed in 2009” that Democrats were somehow involved.
A clearly exasperated Tapper responded that “the point is, the ‘sweetheart deal’, which was completed in 2008, was under the Bush administration.”
The plea agreement inked between Acosta and Epstein’s attorney, Alan Dershowitz, was staggering in its leniency.
Epstein was allowed to leave the prison facility for hours at a time for “work release” to the headquarters of a nebulous enterprise called the “Florida Science Foundation” he founded shortly before beginning his sentence and shut down when it concluded.
Inside the prison, Epstein was allowed to maintain his own office, just as he’d done at Harvard University for years, while watching television and was watched by guards who wore suits and were partially on his payroll.
Mullin and other Republicans closely aligned with the president are treading a careful line on the issue of the Epstein investigation.
The Trump administration ignited a firestorm early in July when the Department of Justice and FBI announced that the agencies would not release any more documents related to the Epstein investigation despite having promised to do so. The agencies cited a refusal to release identifying information about victims and graphic sexual imagery involving children.
