Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., on Tuesday urged Attorney General William Barr to "rip up" a 2008 non-prosecution agreement Jeffrey Epstein made with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Florida that offered immunity to him, four named co-conspirators, and "any potential conspirators" from federal charges.
Epstein, a well-connected money manager, was found hanging by his neck last Saturday in his prison cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, according to a report in The New York Times.
"The federal government failed to bring Jeffrey Epstein to justice," Sasse wrote in a letter to the DOJ, his second memo to the agency this week. "We cannot allow Epstein's accomplices to escape, too."
Sasse, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, slammed the deal negotiated by former Alex Acosta – the U.S. attorney in Miami at the time.
That deal, he said, "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.”
"The idea that wealth and connections can buy injustice — the only plausible explanation for such pathetically soft terms for a serial child rapist at the heart of a massive international criminal enterprise — is wholly and completely inconsistent with the basic notions of fairness and equality that undergird the rule of law enshrined in our Constitution," Sasse added.
Epstein, a wealthy financier who once counted Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic former President Bill Clinton as friends, was arrested July 6 and pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking involving dozens of underage girls as young as 14, from at least 2002 to 2005.
He was facing similar charges in 2008, but agreed to a plea deal and only served 13 months in prison for state prostitution charges over his involvement with underage girls.
The FBI and the Department of Justice's Inspector General opened investigations into his suicide while he was in federal custody.
Epstein's death touched off outrage from Barr, who ordered the warden at the New York federal prison where Epstein was being held temporarily reassigned.