Sen. Markwayne Mullin tried to blame former President Barack Obama for Jeffrey Epstein‘s 2008 plea deal, despite Obama not being president at the time.
Mullin made the comments while being interviewed by Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. First, Tapper and Mullin debated over whether the attorney general has the ability to release documents related to the Epstein investigation, with Mullin insisting that only judges have the ability to make that information public and Tapper arguing that there is additional information that Attorney General Pam Bondi could — and has promised to — release, yet she has not done so.
Then Mullin made a bizarre claim that Epstein struck a deal in Florida in 2009, under President Obama. But that is factually incorrect, as Tapper pointed out.
“Remember there was a plea deal that was struck in 2009, way before I was in office, way before Trump was even considering it to be in office, way before Pam Bondi was office, way before Kash Patel was director,” Mullin said. “2009, there was a sweetheart plea deal that was made underneath the Obama administration with Epstein, and that sweetheart has not been exposed.”
“No, that’s not right,” Tapper said.
“It’s not? Well, when was the case heard?” Mullin asked.
“It was 2008… The U.S. attorney at the time was a guy named Alex Acosta,” Tapper said. “He was a Bush appointee. He went on to become President Trump’s secretary of labor. It all took place in 2008.”
“Who was in office at the time?” Mullin asked.
“2008, George W. Bush,” Tapper said, reciting a well-known fact.
But Mullin continued to insist on incorrect information.
“No, 2009 is when the case came out, and it was — and Obama was in office at the time,” Mullin said.
“It’s not true. It’s not true,” Tapper said.
Mullin doubled down later in the interview.
“I will go back to what you’re saying about it wasn’t true,” Mullin said. “The case was sealed in 2009. That’s absolutely true. It was heard in 2008. It was sealed in 2009.”
Tapper is correct, and Mullin is wrong. An executive summary report of the Epstein case by the Justice Department states that in the summer of 2008, then-U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta negotiated a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein in which the billionaire pleaded guilty to state charges in Florida for soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution. Because of the deal, instead of serving a possible life sentence, he was sentenced to 18 months in a work-release program followed by 12 months of house arrest. Epstein was then allowed to leave the minimum-security facility for 12 hours a day to work at a foundation he had incorporated. Epstein was released after serving less than 13 months. He was also mandated to register as a sex offender and make payments to his victims. According to the Justice Department, Epstein began serving his sentence in Oct. 2008, and a judge unsealed the non-prosecution agreement in Sept. 2009.
A lead prosecutor in the investigation, Marie Villafana, said in 2020 that Epstein’s sweetheart deal was an “injustice.”
“That injustice, I believe, was the result of deep, implicit institutional biases that prevented me and the FBI agents who worked diligently on this case from holding Mr. Epstein accountable for his crimes,” Villafana said.
