That same year, 2011, more girls continued to come forward, including Roberts

That same year, 2011, more girls continued to come forward, including Roberts, who claimed in a British tabloid story that Epstein directed her — while she was underage by Florida standards — to have sex, not only with him, but with other powerful men, including his attorney, Alan Dershowitz, and Prince Andrew. Dershowitz and Andrew denied her claims, but after she filed a sworn affidavit in federal court in Miami, the ensuing news media firestorm forced Acosta, then dean of the law school at Florida International University, to explain why he’d declined to prosecute Epstein. In a written, public statement on March 20, 2011, Acosta asserted that the deal he struck with Epstein’s lawyers was harsher than it would have been had the case remained with the state prosecutor, Krischer, who favored charging Epstein with only a misdemeanor prostitution violation. Acosta also described what he called a “year-long assault’ on prosecutors by Epstein’s “army of legal superstars” who, he said, investigated individual prosecutors and their families, looking for “personal peccadilloes”’ to disqualify them from Epstein’s case. Dershowitz, in an interview, denied that Epstein’s lawyers would ever investigate prosecutors. Documents nevertheless show that Acosta not only buckled under pressure from Epstein’s lawyers, but he and other prosecutors worked with them to contain the case, even as the FBI was uncovering evidence of victims and witnesses in other states, FBI and federal court documents show. A 53-page federal indictment had been prepared in 2007, and subpoenas were served on several of Epstein’s employees, compelling them to testify before a federal grand jury. The court records reveal that emails began to fly back and forth between prosecutors and Epstein’s legal team. Those emails show that federal prosecutors kept acquiescing to Epstein’s demands. Prosecutors allowed Epstein’s lawyers to dictate the terms of each deal that they drew up, and repeatedly backed down on deadlines, so that the defense essentially controlled the pace of the negotiations, the emails and letters show. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016451