A Newsmax guest said on Wednesday night that Jeffrey Epstein “got a very soft touch” from authorities in Florida who “did not prosecute Epstein correctly,” referring to the sweetheart federal nonprosecution agreement Epstein received in 2008 after he was first accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls. The prosecutor who oversaw that plea deal — and later served in President Donald Trump's cabinet during his first administration — joined Newsmax’s board of directors earlier this year.

The Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation stated in an unsigned memo released Sunday that an extensive review of the Epstein case “revealed no incriminating ‘client list,’” that there was no “credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions,” and that investigators “concluded that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in his cell.” The memo repudiated several narratives heavily promoted by right-wing media and triggered a furious response from MAGA figures who accused the agencies of engaging in a cover-up.

Newsmax, a Trumpist competitor to Fox News, has participated in that backlash, and during a Wednesday night segment, host Rob Finnerty asked former Fox host Bill O’Reilly whether he believed that “really powerful people” had gotten “to somebody at DOJ or the FBI or maybe the president himself and made this story go away.”

“I don't waste my time on stuff like that, Rob, because I don't have any information indicating that,” O’Reilly replied. “I do know that in Florida, the authorities did not prosecute Epstein correctly. And there, that's a fact.”

“Now, there hasn't been any charges of bribery or anything like that,” O’Reilly continued. “But Epstein got a very soft touch in Florida when this whole first thing broke. And so that is a fact.” 

Finnerty did not respond to O’Reilly’s remarks about Epstein’s Florida prosecution, instead asking him whether Attorney General Pam Bondi should resign over her handling of the Epstein disclosures.

Newsmax revealed in a June 11 press release that “former U.S. Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta … was appointed to the Board upon the closing of the Company's initial public offering in March of this year.” Biographical information for Acosta included in the release notes that “from 2005 to 2009, Mr. Acosta served as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida” and states that President Donald Trump nominated him for labor secretary in February 2017.

The Newsmax release does not detail the circumstances under which Acosta stepped down from that office. But Newsmax’s July 2019 report on his resignation notes that it followed “renewed scrutiny of his handling of a 2008 secret plea deal with wealthy financier Jeffrey Esptein, who is accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls.”

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.

A Florida judge ruled in 2019 that the prosecutors, led by Acosta, had violated federal law by signing the Epstein plea agreement without notifying his victims, while a 2020 Justice Department report found that Acosta had exercised “poor judgement” in doing so. 

Acosta’s position in the first Trump administration is one of numerous connections between Epstein and the president and his associates — which are typically ignored in MAGA conspiracy theories.  

A few months after Acosta joined the Newsmax board, Trump Media and Technology Group, the company which owns Truth Social and “counts President Donald Trump as its largest shareholder,” announced that it had reached a deal with Newsmax to stream its content.