The strategy worked. Epstein’s team secured the deal of the millennium, one utterly unlike anything else I’ve seen in 25 years of practicing federal criminal law. Epstein agreed to plead guilty to state charges, register as a sex offender, and spend 13 months in county jail, during which time he was allowed to spend 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, out of the jail on “work release.” In exchange, the Southern District of Florida abandoned its criminal investigation of Epstein’s conduct, agreed not to prosecute him federally, and—incredibly—agreed not to prosecute anyone else who helped him procure underage girls for sex. This is not normal; it is astounding.

Why did the Department of Justice cut such a deal? Acosta claimed that the U.S. Attorney’s Office worried it would have trouble proving federal charges against Epstein. With all respect to Acosta—who, in full disclosure, was a law-school classmate—that explanation is not credible. Federal prosecutors are famously reluctant to bring hard-to-prove cases, unlike district attorneys, who are generally eager to roll the dice. But no federal prosecutor would hesitate to pursue allegations of pervasive, organized child-sex abuse, backed by firsthand witnesses. It is more plausible that Epstein successfully wielded his nearly incomprehensible money and power to influence the decision at the highest levels. The personal attacks on the prosecution likely helped too: Federal prosecutors aren’t used to being on the defensive. I once prosecuted a defendant with the resources to hire a famed Kennedy-assassination conspiracy theorist to spin elaborate tales about me; it was unsettling and made the case extremely difficult.

The Southern District of New York has charged headlong into this morass with an indictment charging Epstein with trafficking in minors as young as 14 for sex, and for conspiracy to engage in such trafficking. The indictment describes conduct in New York and Florida in 2002 through 2005—the same period covered by the earlier state and federal investigation. Epstein’s attorney Reid Weingarten characterized this as “ancient conduct,” but in 2006, Congress passed a law eliminating the statute of limitations for child sex-trafficking cases. Under applicable Supreme Court precedent, since the old five-year statute of limitations on Epstein’s alleged conduct had not yet run out, the new law applies to him and makes his conduct in 2002 through 2005 fair game.

Nor is Epstein’s miraculous 2008 non-prosecution agreement likely to spare him. Every federal plea agreement I’ve ever seen includes a clause saying that it binds only the U.S. Attorney’s Office signing it, not any other office. Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement conspicuously, and very oddly, lacks that clause—which further demonstrates the suspicious nature of the deal. But as the federal defense attorney Mark Bennett points out, the agreement promises only that no prosecution would be instituted “in this District”—that is, the Southern District of Florida. That detail, combined with federal law governing such agreements, likely means that no court will stop the Southern District of New York from prosecuting Epstein, especially given allegations that his sexual abuse of minors took place in New York as well as in Florida.