On the November 18 edition of Newsmax’s Greg Kelly Reports, host Greg Kelly defended former Trump Labor Secretary Alex Acosta’s 2008 plea deal with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. During the segment, Kelly did not appear to mention that Acosta is on Newsmax’s board of directors.
Newsmax host defended Alex Acosta's “sweetheart” plea deal with Jeffrey Epstein
Written by Jason Campbell
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From the November 18, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports
GREG KELLY (HOST): Well, that's terrible. Absolutely terrible, and was pretty much unnoticed. That's in 2008. What happened after 2008? Nothing. 2009, did you hear about Jeffrey Epstein? No. How about in 2010? No. 2011, I saw an article in The Wall Street Journal, but that was it. 2012, nothing. And it goes on like this. 2013, nothing. '14, nothing. '15, nothing on Jeffrey Epstein. '16, nothing. What happens? 2017, President Trump becomes president and they think we have another way to get Trump. And why is that? What does Trump have to do with any of this stuff? Well, nothing but his labor secretary, right there, was a guy named Alex Acosta — a good man, actually, who's been totally maligned and misrepresented and lied about. Everybody you're about to hear from has no idea what they're talking about. Acosta was a federal prosecutor who was involved in the Jeffrey Epstein plea deal, right? Where he went to jail and he became a registered sex offender. Everybody here is mischaracterizing it. They're wrong.
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KELLY: Sweetheart deal. Of course it's a sweetheart deal. Everybody on the news says it's a sweetheart deal. What do you mean by a sweetheart deal? What do you actually know? Nothing. They know absolutely nothing. Acosta did not arrange a sweetheart deal. That was a win for the government. You had a guy with unlimited resources who was about to litigate forever — you had people who would not come forward. There were witnesses who were afraid to tell their story or wouldn't tell their story or had other problems, credibility or otherwise. And he made Jeffrey Epstein go to jail and become a registered sex offender. Well, that was only — that was a — that was only on the weekends. That was only this, that or the other thing. Folks, we've assembled some of the worst sex abuse cases you've ever heard, right? Involving teachers and the stuff they did with kids. You see these things in the paper all the time. It's crazy. But sometimes you hear about the arrest and you don't hear about what happens next. We have three cases right here that are pretty, in my view, shocking. You hear about the bad, bad stuff they did, and then you hear about the very, very light penalty. I don't know why this is, but it is. Check it out.
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KELLY: Wow, that's really gross. What is going on? I don't know, I guess it's more complicated to prosecute these cases than one might think. They seem like pretty cut and dried things. And some of them — most of them didn't even go to jail. Some of them didn't become registered sex offenders. Acosta got those things on Jeffrey Epstein, and he's to be commended for that. He's to be — he was doing his job. A lot of people probably couldn't bring that about. How would it have been — 30 days probation, whatever, like the others? I'm sorry. There's more like this. They're almost all like this. It's crazy.
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KELLY: How does this happen? I don't know. But Acosta was able to get a conviction, he was able to get jail, and he was able to make that individual, Jeffrey Epstein, a registered sex offender. Now, that didn't bother a lot of people. I'll get to them in a moment. They're crazy and they're out there and no one's hassling them. Now, some people think that this is a MAGA issue because President Trump — how do they put it? That President Trump actually, this is why he was elected. That's fake news.
This may sound familiar because Kelly has done this before. In July, he ran a segment defending Acosta’s handling of the Epstein case, claiming it “wasn’t a sweetheart deal.”
Here’s how the Miami Herald described what it called “the deal of a lifetime” that Acosta provided to Epstein, who otherwise “could have ended up in federal prison for the rest of his life”:
Not only would Epstein serve just 13 months in the county jail, but the deal — called a non-prosecution agreement — essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes, according to a Miami Herald examination of thousands of emails, court documents and FBI records.
The pact required Epstein to plead guilty to two prostitution charges in state court. Epstein and four of his accomplices named in the agreement received immunity from all federal criminal charges. But even more unusual, the deal included wording that granted immunity to “any potential co-conspirators’’ who were also involved in Epstein’s crimes. These accomplices or participants were not identified in the agreement, leaving it open to interpretation whether it possibly referred to other influential people who were having sex with underage girls at Epstein’s various homes or on his plane.
As part of the arrangement, Acosta agreed, despite a federal law to the contrary, that the deal would be kept from the victims. As a result, the non-prosecution agreement was sealed until after it was approved by the judge, thereby averting any chance that the girls — or anyone else — might show up in court and try to derail it.
On November 14, a panelist on Newsmax’s Chris Plante: The Right Squad brought up Acosta, saying he gave Epstein a “sweetheart deal.”
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From the November 14, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Chris Plante: The Right Squad
TERRY SCHILLING (PRESIDENT, AMERICAN PRINCIPLES PROJECT): Well, look, I think that — Alex, thank you, but I don't know what's going to happen here with this vote in Congress. I think your point is very right in that we need to be careful about the innocent people that could be named in this. You know, every psychopath, every killer out there, they always have their neighbors and people that they've affiliated with who had no clue about the nefarious activities. And that absolutely is going to be true with Jeffrey Epstein. There's going to be a lot of innocent people that had no clue about a lot of this stuff. But I don't know why — I think the only reason why Democrats are playing these types of games of chicken to get Trump to release it is they don't think it's going to come out. I mean, there are way more Democrats that are listed in this thing. We know that Jeffrey Epstein was a Democrat. He funded Democrat campaigns by the millions of dollars. And so I think that they're just playing games. I don't think anything is going to come out, although they should be careful what they wish for because it very well could come out and expose the entire Democratic Party.
ALEX SWOYER (EDITOR-AT-LARGE, THE WASHINGTON TIMES): It's true. It could be just a new talking point after the whole shutdown fell apart. But meanwhile it looks like the Democrats are actively covering their tracks. They tried to take victory laps earlier in the week by suggesting that President Trump spent Thanksgiving with Jeffrey Epstein during his first term in 2017. Now, the official X account of the Democratic Party has taken the post down. OK, you guys, so why did it go down? Jason, do you think President Trump should file another lawsuit against the Democratic Party for that post?
JASON NICHOLS (SENIOR LECTURER, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND): Well, they took it down but I think there are plenty of emails and things that make Donald Trump look bad enough that that isn't necessarily a big deal. I would also say, you know, while it's all talking about he kicked Epstein out and Epstein was a creep and all these things, he was a member of the club a lot longer than Donald Trump seems to remember. And he also took Alex Acosta who got him [Epstein] the sweetheart deal and made him his secretary of the Department of Labor. The other thing is, the one person who in these emails seems to get some level of exoneration is Bill Clinton. And if you listen to Epstein's brother and you look at the files or the logs and the flights, Donald Trump has been on that plane at least seven times, and we know that his brother said yeah, he was also on Donald's plane several times. So again, this — I would say there's an easy way for Trump to deal with this: Release it, redact certain names, you know, the names of victims who don't want to be known. Most of the victims — many of the victims have come forward and said, you know, we're OK. We're out as victims, but redact certain names —
MERCEDES SCHLAPP (SENIOR FELLOW, AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE UNION): That's exactly what they're doing right now under Pam Bondi. They're moving forward with this U.S. attorney. I think it's a smart move to get this out in the open. I think this is something that they want to see transparency. But I do think that what the Democrats are doing is that by them selectively leaking these emails, trying to create this false narrative — oh, sounds a lot like the Russian hoax, which, of course was a big fat lie coming from the Democrats.
On October 30, Newsmax’s National Report played an interview with Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy in which he praised members of Newsmax’s board of directors, calling Acosta “one of the most well-connected lawyers in Washington.”
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From the October 30, 2025 edition of Newsmax's National Report
CHRIS RUDDY (NEWSMAX CEO): Well, he's a top notch, world class entrepreneur and business guy. Fubo TV he started from nothing. It's now become — he turned it into a public company. It's been super successful. There's reports it's going to merge with Hulu very soon, and we hope he'll be running both companies. But this is a man that was a pathfinder and is a friend of mine and Newsmax and has given us a lot of good advice. So we really appreciate him coming. And he joins people like Paula Dobriansky, former assistant secretary of state, who has got world-class involvement in business around the world. She headed up Reuters business internationally. Alex Acosta, who's a famous lawyer, one of the most well-connected lawyers in Washington. So we have a lot of legal, international, and business minds at the table when we meet.